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IReport 

. . . ON . . . 

Correlation of Stubiee 



BY 



COMMITTEE Of FIFTEEN 

WITH ANNOTATIONS. 






ijSSkft. 



CORRELATION OF STUDIES 



KEFOKT OF SUB-COMMITTEE 



on)n)it't'ee of t^ifteen 



Com. WM. T^ HARRIS, Chairman 
Supt. J. M. GKEENV^OOD 
Supt. C. B. GILBERT 

Supt. L. H. JONES 

Supt. W. H. MAXWELL 

/ '^ WITH 



ANNOTATIONS 



GEO. F.^BROWN. 




^-\.s^ 



bloomington. ill. : 

Public-School Publishing Co. 

1895. 



h- 






■JO 



COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN. 



Report of the Sub-Committee on the Correlation 
OF Studies in Elementary Education. 



The undersigned Committee agrees upon the following re- 
port, each member reserving for himself the expression of his 
individual divergence from the opinion of the majority, by a 
statement appended to his signature, enumerating the points 
to which exception is taken and the grounds for them. ^ 

I. CORRELATION OF STUDIES. 

Your Committee .understands by correlation of studies: 
1. Logical order of topics and branches. 

First, the arrangement of topics in proper sequence in the 
course of study, in such a manner that each branch develops 
in an order suited to the natural and easy progress of the 
child, and so that each step is taken at the proper time to 
help his advance to the next step in the same branch, or to the 
next steps in other related branches of the course of study. ^ 

1 The author of this report uses the word Correlation in its gen- 
erally accepted sense of reciprocal relation. The things here related are 
the studies in the school, and life in the social order. What are the 
mutual relations between these? Evidently those of "Science to art. 
The social order is the art of which the school studies are the science. 
The problem of the school is to so master these sciences that their ap- 
plication to the art of living shall be easy and natural. The life of the 
community is these school studies animated by will and touched with 
feeling. What is the value of each study in preparing for living in the 
civilization of which the child is a member? The chief purpose of this 
report is to answer this question. The full discussion of these values 
demands that some consideration be given to co-ordination of these 
studies in the school and the method of teaching them, and this is done 
throughout the report, though very briefly and imperfectly; 

2 This first definition is very imperfect in that it considers only the 
order of the sequence of topics within the respective groups of like sub- 
jects; for example. Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry in Mathematics. 
But having determined what studies in each group should go into the 



4 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

2. Symm,etrical whole of studies in the world of human 
learning. 

Second, the adjustment of the branches of study in such a 
manner that the whole course at any given time. represents all 
the great divisions of human learning, as far as is possible at 
the stage of maturity at which the pupil has arrived, and that 
each allied group of studies is represented by some one of its 
branches best adapted for the epoch in question; it being im- 
plied that there is an equivalence of studies to a greater or 
less degree within each group, and that each branch of human 
learning should be represented by some equivalent study; so 
that, while no great division is left unrepresented, no group 
shall have superfluous representatives and thereby debar otheij 
groups from a proper representation. ' 

3. Psychological{jSymmetry — the whole mind. 

Third, the selection and arrangement of the branches and 
topics within each branch considered pyschologically with a 
view to afford the best exercise of the faculties of the mind, 
and to secure the unfolding of those faculties in their natural 
order, so that no one faculty is so overcultivated or so neg- 
lected as to produce abnormal or one-sided mental develop- 
ment. * 

elementary schools, the questions in what order, and at what stage of 
progress each shall be introduced becomes important as questions of 
method. 

^ The second definition considers Correlation on the basis of the 
co-ordination of the different groups of studies, so that the pupil's view 
of life may be comprehensive at every step and not limited to the 
studies of a single group. Let the pupil look through all "of the five 
windows of the soul" at every stage of his progress. The relative im- 
portance of the view from each of these five windows is not consideied. 
That is, the actual value of each study in the art of living is ignored. 
The same time and energy might be given to the representative study 
pursued in each group, without disregarding this definition of Correla- 
tion. 

* The third basis of correlation is taken from the point of view of 
the mind to be educated. It is therefore purely subjective, the child's 
relation to the world not being considered. The question here is what 
studies, and in what order, will best develop the different faculties? 
It is considered of minor importance what the content of the studies 



Correlation of Studies. 5 

Jf. Correlation of pupil's course of study with the world in which 
he lives — his spiritual and natural environment. 

Fourth and chiefly, your Committee understands by corre- 
lation of studies the selection and arrangement in orderly 
sequence of such objects of study as shall give the child an 
insight into the world that he lives in, and a command over its 
resources such as is obtained by a helpful co-operation with 
one's fellows. In a word, the chief consideration to which all 
others are to be subordinated, in the opinion of your Com- 
mittee, in this requirement of the civilization into which the 
child is born, as determining not only what he shall study in 
school, but what habits and customs he shall be taught in the 
family before the school age arrives ; as well as that he shall 
acquire a skilled acquaintance with some one of a definite 
series of trades, professions, or vocations in the years that fol- 
low school ; and, furthermore, that this question of the relation 
of the pupil to his civilization determines what political duties 
he shall assume and what religious faith or spiritual aspirations 
shall be adopted for the conduct of his life. 

To make more clear their reasons for the preference here 
expressed for the objective and practical basis of selection of 
topics for the course of study, rather than the subjective basis 
so long favored by educational writers, your Committee would 
describe the psychological basis, already mentioned, as being 
merely formal in its character, relating only to the exercise of 
the so-called mental faculties. 

It would furnish a training of spiritual powers analogous 
to the gymnastic training of the muscles of the body. Gym- 
nastics may develop strength and agility without leading to 
any skill in trades or useful employment. So an abstract 
psychological training may develop the will, the intellect, the 
imagination, or the memory, but without leading to an exer- 
cise (Jf acquired power in the interests of civilization. The 

may be, provided they give the discipline needed at the particular 
period of growth considered. In this view it is one's theory of the 
nature and activities of the mind and of their mutual relations that 
would determine the studies he should select. The purpose of the cor- 
relation here considered is to form the mind without much regard to 
furnishing it. It is the reciprocal relation between the studies and the 
mental faculties that is regarded. 



6 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

game of chess would furnish a good, course of study for the 
discipline of the powers of attention and calculation of abstract 
conabinations, but it would give its possessor little or no 
knowledge of man or nature. The psychological ideal which 
has prevailed to a large extent in education has in the old 
phrenology, and in the recent studies in physiological psy- 
chology, sometimes given place to a biological ideal. Instead 
of the view of mind as made up of faculties like will, intellect, 
imagination, and emotion, conceived to be all necessary to the 
soul if developed in harmony with one another, the concept of 
nerves or brain-tracts is used as the ultimate regulative prin- 
ciple to determine the selection and arrangement of studies. 
Each part of the brain is supposed to have its claim on the 
attention of the educator, and that study is thought to be the 
most valuable which employs normally the larger number of 
brain-tracts. This view reaches c.n extreme in the direction of 
formal as opposed to objective or practical grounds for select- 
ing a course of study. While the old psychology with its 
mental faculties concentrated its attention on the mental pro- 
cesses and neglected the world of existing objects and relations 
upon which those processes were directed, physiological psy- 
chology tends to confine its attention to the physical part of 
the process, the organic changes in the brain cells and their 
functions. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that psychology of both 
kinds, physiological and introspective, can bold only a sub- 
ordinate place in the settlement of questions relating to the 
correlation of studies. The branches to be studied, and the 
extent to which they are studied, will be determined mainly 
by the demands of one's civilization. These will prescribe 
what is most useful to make the individual acquainted with 
physical nature and with human nature so as to fit him as an 
individual to perform his duties in the several institutions — 
family, civil society, the state, and the Church. But next' after 
this, psychology will furnish important considerations that 
will largely determine the methods of instruction, the order of 
taking up the several topics so as to adapt the school work to 
the growth of the pupil's capacity, and the amount of work so 
as not to overtax his powers by too much or arrest the devel- 
opment of strength by too little. A vast number of subor- 



Correlation of Studies. 7 

dinate details belonging to the pathology of education, such 
as the hygienic features of school architecture and furniture, 
programmes, the length of study hours and of class exercises, 
recreation, and bodily reactions against mental effort, will be 
finally settled by scientific experiment in the department of 
physiological psychology. 

Inasmuch as your Committee is limited to the consideration 
of the correlation of studies in the elementary school, it has 
considered the question of the course of study in general only 
in so far as this has been found necessary in discussing the 
grounds for the selection of studies for the period of school 
education occupying the eight years from six to fourteen years, 
or the school period between the kindergarten on the one hand 
and the secondary school on the other. It has not been pos- 
sible to avoid some inquiry into the true distinction between 
secondary and elementary studies, since one of the most impor- 
tant questions forced upon the attention of your Committee 
is that of the abridgment of the elementary course of study 
from eight or more years to seven or even six years, and the 
corresponding increase of the time devoted to studies usually 
assigned to the high school and supposed to belong to the sec- 
ondary course of study for some intrinsic reason.^ 

^This is a wonderfully clear, though brief, presentation of the func- 
tion of the school and of psychology in realizing that function. It will 
be accused of giving too little importance to physiological psychology. 
The author of this report has elsewhere elaborated more fully the rela- 
tive values of the old and new psychology. (See article in Puhlic- 
School Journal, June, 1895.) 

In none of these definitions of correlation has the report considered 
that use of the word which holds it to mean such an organization of 
the studies in the practice of teaching as will make one or more centers 
around which the other studies may be grouped. Some of the Herbart- 
ans, so-called, would make history and literature the core studies in the 
curriculum, for example, and teach all the others as, in a measure, 
subordinate to these. What man has thought and done is held to be 
the most valuable knowledge-content for education, and the instru- 
ments that he has used in his thinking and doing are of subordinate 
value. Others would make the nature studies the important, or, 
at least, the initial studies, and learn arithmetic, language, literature, 
etc., as the study of science suggests. Others, still, would make three 
groups — nature studies, human studies, and mathematics — and tie 
these groups together where they touch each other. It was the 
understanding of those who were making a study of correlation in 



8 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

II. THE COURSE OF STUDY — EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 

Your Committee would report that it has discussed in de- 
tail the several branches of study that have found a place in 
the curriculum of the elementary school, with a view to dis- 
cover their educational value for developing and training the 
faculties of the mind, and more especially for correlating the 
pupil with his spiritual and natural environment in the world 
in which he lives. 

A. Layiguage studies. 

There is first to be noted the prominent place of language 
study that takes the form of reading, penmanship, and gram- 
mar in the first eight years' work of the school. It is claimed 
for the partiality shown to these studies that it is justified by 
the fact that language is the instrument that makes possible 
human social organization. It enables each person to com- 
municate his individual experience to his fellows and thus per- 

this sense that the report of this Committee was to discuss chiefly 
this meaning of correlation. Much of the opposition that followed the 
presentation of the report to the convention of superintendents at 
Cleveland arose from this misunderstanding. The report really dis- 
cusses the function of the studies with occasional reference to the 
method of realizing their values in the school. The other view would 
have made the method of realizing these values the subject of the report, 
with occasional reference to the function of the studies in education. 

It may be well to suggest, in view of some published criticisms on 
this report, that the author had in mind that the school should prepare 
for what is ideally involved in our civilization, rather than subjection 
to its actual limitations. Some seem to have supposed that he would 
make the school the means of perpetuating the imperfections of 
the social organism rather than of removing them. (See edi- 
torial in The New York School-J&urnal of April 6, 1895.) The 
ideal to which the present civilization points is certainly a fitting 
aim for the schools to seek to realize. John Stuart Mills' definition of 
the aim of education, that it should seek to maintain the advancement 
that has been made and, if possible, improve it, is similar to the 
one involved in this report. The civilization of any period is an 
exponent of the average intellectual and moral character of the 
citizens. This average is to be raised by making the ideals of the 
civilization, as well as its present established order, subjects of study 
in the education of the child and in the subsequent education of the 
adult. 



Correlation of Studies, 9 

mits each to profit by the experience of all. The written and 
printed forms of speech preserve human knowledge and make 
progress in civilization possible. The conclusion is reached 
that learning to read and write should be the leading study of 
the pupil in his first four years of school. ® 

Reading and writing are not so much ends in themselves 
as means for the acquirement of all other human learning. 
This consideration alone would be sufficient to justify their 
actual place in the work of the elementary school. But these 
branches require of the learner a difficult process of analysis. 
The pupil must identify the separate words in the sentence he 
uses, and in the next place must recognize the separate sounds 
in each word. It requires a considerable effort for the child 
or the savage to analyze his sentence into its constituent 
words, and a still greater effort to discriminate its elementary 
sounds. Reading, writing, and spelling in their most element- 
ary form, therefore, constitute a severe training in mental 
analysis for the child of six to ten years of age. We are told 
that it is far more disciplinary to the mind than any species of 
observation of differences among material things, because of 
the fact that the word has a twofold character — addressed to 
external sense as spoken sound to the ear, or as written and 
printed words to the eye — but containing a meaning or sense 
addressed to the understanding and only to be seized by intro- 
spection. The pupil must call up the corresponding idea by 
thought, memory, and imagination, or else the word will cease 
to be a word and remain only a sound or character. 

On the other hand, observation of things and movements 
does not necessarily involve this twofold act of analysis, intro- 
spective and objective, but only the latter — the objective 

^The author's definition of language, which is "a synthesis of thing 
and thought — of outward sign and inward signification," should be kept 
prominently in mind in studying this section on language studies. It 
is in the light of this definition that the author's statement that the 
leading study of the pupil in the first four years Is reading and writing, 
must be interpreted. Indeed, the leading purpose of the entire school 
course is to enable the pupils to read, meaning by that to interpret the 
printed page. It is because children cannot interpret the printed page, 
even after they graduate from the high school, that the young people 
of today find so little interest in reading good books, and find their 
school course of so little value to them. 



10 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

analysis. It is granted that we all have frequent occasion to 
condemn poor methods of instruction as teaching words rather 
than things. But we admit that we mean empty sounds or 
characters rather than true words. Our suggestions for the 
correct method of teaching amount in this case simply to lay- 
ing stress on the meaning of the word, and to setting the 
teaching process on the road of analysis of content rather than 
form. In the case of words used to store up external observa- 
tion the teacher is told to repeat and make alive again the act 
of observation by which the word obtained its original mean- 
ing. In the case of a word expressing a relation between facts 
or events, the pupil is to be taken step by step through the 
process of reflection by which the idea was built up. Since 
the word, spoken and written, is the sole instrument by which 
reason can fix, preserve, and communicate both the data of 
sense and the relations discovered between them by reflec- 
tion, no new method in education has been able to supplant in 
the school the branches, reading and penmanship. But the 
real improvements in method have led teachers to lay greater 
and greater stress on the internal factor of the word, on its 
meaning, and have in manifold ways shown how to repeat the 
original experiences that gave the meaning to concrete words, 
and the original comparisons and logical deductions by which 
the ideas of relations and causal processes arose in the mind 
and required abstract words to preserve and communicate 
them. ' 

It has been claimed that it would be better to have first a 
basis of knowledge of things, and secondarily and subsequently 
a knowledge of words. But it has been replied to this, that 
the progress of the child in learning to talk indicates his ascent 
out of mere impressions into the possession of true knowledge. 
For he names objects only after he has made some synthesis 
of his impressions and has formed general ideas. He recog- 
nizes the same object under different circumstances of time 

'This discussion must not be interpreted as an argument against 
the observation of external things and movements, but as a defense of 
language study against the wild assertions and declamations that have 
been made against it in recent years. These declamations should be 
directed toward the poor teaching of language. It is not by burning 
the grammar but by properly teachinqii that our language instruction 
is to be improved. 



Correlation of tStudies. 11 

and place, and also recognizes other objects belonging to the 
same class by and with names. Hence the use of the word 
indicates a higher degree of self-activity — the stage of mere 
impressions without words or signs being a comparatively pas- 
sive state of mind. What we mean by things first and words 
afterward, is, therefore, not the apprehension of objects by pas- 
sive impressions so much as the active investigation and ex- 
perimenting which come after words are used and the higher 
forms of analysis are called into being by that invention of rea- 
son known as language, which, as before said, is a synthesis 
of thing and thought, of outward sign and inward signification. 

Rational investigation cannot precede the invention of 
language any more than blacksmithing can precede the inven- 
tion of hammers, anvils, and pincers. For language is the 
necessary tool of thought used in the conduct of the analysis 
and synthesis of investigation.^ 

Your Committee wouldsum up these considerations by say- 
ing that language rightfully forms the center of instruction in 
the elementary school, but that progress in methods of teach- 
ing is to be made, as hitherto, chiefly by laying more stress on 
the internal side of the word, its meaning; using better graded 
steps to build up the chain of experience or the train of 
thought that the word expresses.® 

The first three year's work of the child is occupied mainly 
with the mastery of the printed and written forms of the 
words of his colloquial vocabulary; words that he is already 
familiar enough with as sounds addressed to the ear. He has to 
become familiar with the new forms addressed to the eye, and it 

®This criticism on the maxim, "Things before words," is a valid 
one. The maxim is directed toward a too prevalent practice of the 
study of words without things, and, like all maxims, it is as false as the 
thing against which it is directed. What we are really seeking is the 
meaning and the word. One is of no value without the other in the 
education of the child. There is no such thing as a valuable observa- 
tion and investigation of natural objects without language in which to 
embody the results at every step. 

®This is substantially the view of the Herbartians, as regards the 
function of language studies. It contains, however, an implied criticism 
on the claim, so often set up, that what good teachers have been doing 
and are doing has no validity. What the language instruction needs 
Is that greater stress be laid upon the meaning of language. The 
methods of doing this may differ, but all agree that it must be done. 



12 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

would be an unwise method to require him to learn many new 
words at the same time that he is learning to recognize his old 
words and their new shape, But as soon as he has acquired, 
before three years, some facility in reading what is printed in 
the colloquial style, he may go on to selections from stand- 
ard authors.^" 

1 °Most good teachers will enter a strong protest against the first sen- 
tence of this paragraph. To them it will seem to advocate the dead formal- 
ism that is blighting so many primary schools. If the statement had been 
that the first three years' work is occupied mainly with the mastery of 
printed composition of an interesting and educative content,expressed in 
words of his colloquial vocabulary, and with the oral and written expres- 
sion of his own thoughts concerning this and other matters, while empha- 
sizing the fact that a knowledge of form must keep pace with the knowl- 
edge of meaning in accordance with the suggestion in the preceeding 
paragraph, they would have been accepted it without protest. It is such 
statements as this, which occur occasionally in this report, that give 
comfort to the mechanical teacher who is satisfied with the mere forms of 
knowledge, and that make those grieve who are striving to interest the 
child in both meaning and form from the beginning of his school life. 
That the early months of the child's school experience must be mainly de- 
voted to the new sight forms of language which the school is to use is true, 
but that threeyears are to be spent chiefly in the mastery of the printed 
and written forms of his colloquial vocabulary is past all believing! 
It would seem as if the declaration that a child should learn no new 
words for three years would need no refutation. It is a proposition too 
absurd for serious consideration. The fact is that with good teaching 
the child learns many new words, both form and content, that are not 
in his colloquial vocabulary, in the first year of his school life. 

The commanding purpose of this and the following paragraph is to 
establish the value of the ordinary text-book in reading. It is an able 
defense of the prominent place it has held for years among school ma- 
terial. It will be noted that it bases the value of the reading book upon 
the fact that the selections in it are literary wholes, as well as upon the 
artistic excellence of the selections. It has been the argument of those 
who have opposed the "scrappy reading books" that they did not con- 
tain complete literary wholes. There seems to be no difference of 
opinion between this report and those who oppose the reading book as 
to the desirableness of complete works of literature for use in the read- 
ing classes. The question raised by the report is whether the selec- 
tions in the readers are such literary wholes as are best fitted for 
the purpose for which they are used. 

The foolish practice of substituting the reading of current events 
for literature in the upper grades of our elementary schools, which pre- 
vails in some localities, is not thought worthy of mention. It is one of 
those unwise efforts to counteract poor teaching by introducing worth- 
less material, because it is supposed to be more interesting to young 
people. 



Correlation of Studies. 13 

The literary selections should be graded, and are graded in 
almost all series of readers used in our elementary schools, in 
such a way as to bring those containing the fewest words outside 
of the colloquial vocabulary into the lower books of the series, 
and increasing the difficulties step by step as the pupil grows 
in maturity. The selections are literary works of art possess- 
ing the required organic unity and a proper reflection of this 
unity in the details, as good works of art must do. But they 
portray situations of the soul, or scenes of life, or elaborated 
reflections, of which the child can obtain some grasp through 
his capacity to feel and think, although in scope and compass 
they far surpass his range. They are adapted, therefore, to 
lead him out of and beyond himself, as spiritual guides. 

Literary style employs, besides words common to the col- 
loquial vocabulary, words used in a semi-technical sense expres- 
sive of fine shades of thought and emotion. The literary work 
of art furnishes a happy expression for some situation of the 
soul, or some train of reflection hitherto unutterable in an 
adequate manner. If the pupil learns this literary production, 
he finds himself powerfully helped to understand both himself 
and his fellow-men. The most practical knowledge of all, it 
will be admitted, is a knowledge of human nature — a knowl- 
edge that enables one to combine with his fellow-men and to 
share with them the physical and spiritual wealth of the race. 
Of this high character as humanizing or civilizing, are the 
favorite works of literature found in the school readers, about 
one hundred and fifty English and American writers being 
drawn upon for the material. Such are Shakespeare's speeches 
of Brutus and Mark Anthony, Hamlet's and Macbeth's solilo- 
quies, Milton's L' Allegro and II Penseroso, Gray's Elegy, 
Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade and Ode on the Death 
of the Duke of Wellington, Byron's Waterloo, Irving's Rip 
Van Winkle, Webster's reply to Hayne, the trial of Knapp, 
and Bunker Hill oration, Scott's Lochinvar, Marmion, and 
Roderick Dhu, Bryant's Thanatopsis, Longfellow's Psalm of 
Life, Paul Revere, and The Bridge, O'Hara's Bivouac of 
the Dead, Campbell's Hohenlinden, Collins' How Sleep the 
Brave, Wolfe's Burial of Sir John Moore, and other fine prose 
and poetry from Addison, Emerson, Franklin, The Bible, 
Hawthorne, Walter Scott, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Swift, 



14 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

Milton, Cooper, Whittier, Lowell, and-the rest. The reading 
and study of fine selections in prose and verse furnish the chief 
aesthetic training of the elementary school. But this should 
be re-enforced by some study of photographic or other repro- 
ductions of the world's great masterpieces of architecture, 
sculpture, and painting. The frequent sight of these repro- 
ductions is good ; the attempt to copy or sketch them with 
the pencil is better ; best of all is an aesthetic lesson on their 
composition, attempting to describe in words the idea of the 
whole that gives the work its organic unity, and the devices 
adopted by the artist to reflect this idea in the details and 
re-enforce its strength. The aesthetic taste of teacher and 
pupil can be cultivated by such exercises, and once set on the 
road of development this taste may improve through life. ^^ 

A third phase of language study in the elementary school 
is formal grammar. The works of literary art in the readers, 
re-enforced as they ought to be by supplementary reading at 
home of the whole works from which the selections for the 
school readers are made, will educate the child in the use of a 

^^ The absence of any reference here or elsewhere in this report to 
the use of that material known as child literature, other than what 
may be found in the reading books, will be criticised by many. The 
idea of literature in this discussion seems to be limited to the best that 
has been thought, clothed in artistic form. It will be considered an 
error not to recognize the helpfulness in education of the best juvenile 
literature also. There is, besides, a prevailing idea that there are 
stages in the child's growth so different as to call for a special kind of 
literature in each. How much of truth there is in this idea of "culture 
epochs" is not yet clearly made out, but that there is some truth in it 
all admit. Whatever may be true of our advanced readers it is cer- 
tainly true that the primary readers are "scrappy" and have a content 
of little literary worth. They are too often constructed for the sole 
purpose of teaching the child "the printed forms of the words in his 
coloquial vocabulary" and for nothing else. The reading and telling of 
folk-lore and fairy stories, fables, stories of adventure and the like are 
an important part of language studies in the lower grades. Then, too, 
as is pointed out by Mr. Gilbert, a member of this sub-committee, the 
need of training in oral and written composition in the lower grades is 
not mentioned. These omissions seem to indicate a want of recognition 
in this report of recent improvements in methods of teaching language, 
unless we fill out to include these what is involved in the general state- 
ment that "progress in methods of teaching is to be made, as hitherto, 
chiefly by laying more Stress on the internal side of the word, its 
meaning." 



Correlation of Studies. 15 

higher and better English style. Technical grammar never 
can do this. Only familiarity with fine English works will 
insure one a good and correct style. But grammar is the 
science of language, and as the first of the seven liberal arts it 
has long held sway in school as the disciplinary study par 
excellence. A survey of its educational value, subjective and 
objective, usually produces the conviction that it is to retain 
the first place in the future. Its chief objective advantage is 
that it shows the structure of language, and the logical forms 
of subject, predicate, and modifier, thus revealing the essen- 
tial nature of thought itself, the most important of all objects 
because it is self-object. On the subjective or psychological 
side, grammar demonstrates its title to the first place by its 
use as a discipline in subtle analysis, in logical division and 
classification, in the art of questioning, and in the mental 
accomplishment of making exact definitions. Nor is this an 
empty, formal discipline, for its subject matter, language, is a 
product of the reason of a people not as individuals but as a 
social whole, and the vocabulary holds in its store of words 
the generalized experience of that people, including sensuous 
observation and reflection, feeling and emotion, instinct and 
volition. ^2 

12 This statement of the value of grammar, in a scheme of educa- 
tion, is both able and convincing. The danger of pursuing the tech- 
nical study of it to the neglect of the more important literary content 
which these language forms embody is also clearly set forth and is a 
timely warning. Would it be too much to say that no better defense of 
grammar in the school curriculum has ever been made? It was evi- 
dently written in reply to a demand that grammar be enpunged from 
the common school course, and its influence will be to establish this 
study firmly in some stage of school instruction. But in what stage? 
When we examine the programme of daily recitations recommended 
by this report we discover that the text-book study of formal 
grammar is to begin in the middle of the fifth year and extend to the 
end of the seventh. But few will accept this recommendation. Oral 
grammar with composition lessons to the middle of the fifth year, and 
text-book study, five lessons per week, till the eighth ! The pupil must 
bring to this study a maturity that comes from age, and the organiza- 
tion of a pretty large mass of apperceiving ideas if he is to come into any 
mastery of it. The report declared, on page 11, that the child must not 
be asked to read matter containing new words before he is ten years of 
age because he cannot learn new ideas and. new forms at the same 
time. But when he is only one year and a half older he is thought able 



16 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

No formal labor on a great objective field is ever lost 
wholly, since at the very least it has the merit of familiarizing 
the pupil with the contents of some one extensive province that 
borders on his life, and with which he must come into correla- 
tion; but it is easy for any special formal discipline, when con- 
tinued too long, to paralyze or arrest growth at that stage, 
the overcultivation of the verbal memory tends to arrest the 
growth of critical attention and reflection. Memory of acces- 
sory details too, so much prized in the school, is also cultivated 
often at the expense of an insight into the organizing principle 
of the whole and the causal nexus that binds the parts. So 
too, the study of quantity, if carried to excess, may warp the 
mind into a habit of neglecting quality in its observation and 
reflection. As there is no subsumption in the quantitative 
judgment but only dead equality or inequality (A is equal to or 
greater or less than B), there is a tendency to atrophy in the 
faculty of concrete syllogistic reasoning on the part of the per- 
son devoted exclusively to mathematics. For the normal syllo- 
gism uses judgments wherein the subject is subsumed under 
the predicate (This is a rose — the individual rose is subsumed 
under the class rose; Socrates is a man, etc.) Such reasoning 
concerns individuals in two aspects, first as concrete wholes 
and secondly as members of higher totalities or classes — species 
and genera. Thus, too, grammar, rich as it is in its contents, 
is only a formal discipline as respects the scientific, historic, or 
literary contents of language, and is indifferent to them. A 

to enter upon the text-book study of formal grammar, with the view of 
obtaining from this study the culture described. Of course this recom- 
mendation was made with a full knowledge of the kind of text-books in 
grammar that are supplied the schools. It would require a skilled 
teacher in every case to prevent the dull, mechanical, worthless gram- 
matical (?) grind that is now a positive curse in so many schools. The 
formal teacher will shelter himself behind this recommendation, and 
go on in the same old way, worse than wasting both time and energy. 
Let it oe borne in mind that this report defines grammar to be the 
scienoe of language. It is the least concrete of all the school studies, 
as this discussion shows. Certainly much can be done before the 
seventh school year, incidentally to the literature and language study 
adapted to the child's intelligence, to give the pupil a knowledge of the 
technical vocabulary and of the construction of sentences, but a formal 
text-book study of English grammar will be of little value in grades 
below the seventh. 



Correlation of Studies. 17 

training for four or five years in parsing and grammatical an- 
alysis practiced on literary works of art (Milton, Shakspeare, 
Tennyson, Scott) is a training of the pupil into habits of in- 
difference toward and neglect of the genius displayed in the 
literary work of art, and into habits of impertinent and trifling 
attention to elements employed as material or texture, and a 
corresponding neglect of the structural form which alone is 
the work of the artist. A parallel to this would be the mason's 
habit of noticing only the brick and mortar, or the stone and 
cement, in his inspection of the architecture, say of Sir Chris- 
topher Wren. A child overtrained to analyze and classify 
shades of color — examples of this one finds occasionally in a 
primary school whose specialty is "objective teaching" — might 
in later life visit an art gallery and make an inventory of colors 
without getting even a glimpse of a painting as a work of art. 
Such overstudy and misuse of grammar as one finds in the 
elementary school, it is feared, exists to some extent in sec- 
ondary schools and even in colleges m the work of mastering 
the classic authors. ^^ 

Your Committee is unanimous in the conviction that formal 
grammar should not be allowed to usurp the place of a study 
of the literary work of art in accordance with literary method. 
The child can be gradually trained to see the technical "mo- 
tives" of a poem or prose work of art and to enjoy the aesthetic 
inventions of the artist. The analysis of a work of art should 
discover the idea that gives it organic unity; the collision 
and the complication resulting; the solution and denouement. 
Of course these things must be reached in the elementary 
school without even a mention of their technical terms. The 

i^Never in the history of pedagogical writing has so clear and con- 
vincing a statement been made of the disastrous results to the child of 
formal discipline in paralyzing his powers or arresting his growth when 
continued too long. It is a new analysis and criticism of the dead for- 
malism that is blighting elementary education in so many places. This 
is an application of psychological knowledge not before made that will 
give this report great influence in improving our educational methods. 
Every thoughtful teacher can see at once how it is true that a study of 
the common school branches may be made a curse to the children by 
making bond slaves of them. Col. Parker has said repeatedly that to 
limit the teaching in the common schools to the three R's was to en- 
slave the children and not to liberate them. This paragraph shows why 



18 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

subject of the piece is brought out; its reflection in the condi- 
tions of the time and place to heighten interest by showing its 
importance; its second and stronger reflection in the several 
details of its conflict and struggle ; its reflection in the denoue- 
ment wherein its struggle ends in victory or defeat and the 
ethical or rational interests are vindicated — and the results 
move outward, returning to the environment again in ever- 
widening circles — something resembling this is to be found in 
every work of art, and there are salient features which can be 
briefly but profitably made subject of comment in familiar lan- 
guage with even the youngest pupils. There is an ethical and 
an aesthetical content to each work of art. It is profitable to 
point out both of these in the interest of the child's growing 
insight into human nature. The ethical should, however, be 
kept in subordination to the aesthetical, but for the sake of the 
supreme interests of the ethical itself. Otherwise the study of 
a work of art degenerates into a goody-goody performance, 
and its effects on the child are to cause a reaction against the 
moral. The child protects his inner individuality against 
effacement through external authority by taking an attitude 
of rebellion against stories with an appended moral. Herein 
the superiority of the aesthetical in literary art is to be seen. 
For the ethical motive is concealed by the poet, and the hero 
is painted with all his brittle individualism and self-seeking. 
His passions and his selfishness, gilded by fine traits of bravery 
and noble manners, interest the youth, interest us all. The es- 
tablished social and moral order seems to the ambitious hero to 
be an obstacle to the unfolding of the charms of individuality. 
The deed of violence gets done, and the Nemesis is aroused. 
Now his deed comes back on the individual doer, and our sym- 
pathy turns against him and we rejoice in his fall. Thus the 
aesthetical unity contains within it the ethical unity. The les- 
son of the great poet or novelist is taken to heart, whereas 
the ethical announcement by itself might have failed, especially 
with the most self-active and aspiring of the pupils. Aristotle 
pointed out in his Poetics this advantage of the aesthetic unity, 
which Plato in his Republic seems to have missed. Tragedy 
purges us of our passions, to use Aristotle's expression, because 
we identify our own wrong inclinations with those of the hero, 



Correlation of Studies. 19 

and by sympathy we suffer with him and see our intended deed 
returned upon us with tragic effect, and are thereby cured. ^* 

Your committee has dwelt upon the aesthetic side of liter- 
ature in this explicit manner because they believe that the 
general tendency in elementary schools is to neglect the liter- 
ary art for the literary formalities which concern the mechan- 
ical material rather than the spiritual form. Those formal 
studies should not be discontinued, but subordinated to the 
higher study of literature. 

Your Committee reserves the subject of language lessons, 
composition writing, and what relates to the child's expression 
of ideas in writing, for consideration under Part 3 of this 
Report, treating of program. 

B. Arithmetic. 

Side by side with language study is the study of mathe- 
matics in the schools, claiming the second place in importance 
of all studies. It has been pointed out that mathematics con- 
cerns the laws of time and space — their structural form, so to 
speak — and hence that it formulates the logical conditions of 
all matter both in rest and in motion. Be this as it may, the 

i^Thls presentation of the way to realize the ethical influence of 
literature and other art creations through the absorption of the pupil 
in the aesthetic element in them is worthy of the highest praise. A 
beautiful thing must be studied for its beauty of form and content and 
not for the moral lesson it teaches, if it shall teach Its moral lesson 
effectively. The formula "This fable teaches," is not the way to use 
art to promote morals. 

There is one omission in this discussion of language studies that 
will be noticed by many readers, and has been referred to already in 
these comments. While it urges the early study of classic literature it 
is silent about child literature. It seems to assume that the former is 
the only grade of literature worthy of the name. We believe it is a mis- 
take to ignore the recent movement in education which seeks to interest 
the children in the "best that has been thought and said" on the plane 
of child culture and experience. There is a realm of the common-place 
and another of the higher life quite as real in children as in adults. In 
other words, there is a child-literature relatively as artistic and 
inspiring to children as literature proper is to men and women. It is 
by stimulating and nourishing the immature artistic and moral instincts 
of the child, that he comes to love the beautiful and the good in later 
years. The best educational practice in the country has recognized in 
fairy tales and stories for children a phase of language study which this 
report seems to have overlooked. 



20 Report of Committee of Fijteen. 

high position of mathematics as the- science of all quantity is ij 
universally acknowledged. The elementary branch of mathe- I, 
matics is arithmetic, and this is studied in the primary and |! 
grammar schools from six to eight years, or even longer. The j 
relation of arithmetic to the whole field of mathematics has |: 
been stated (by Comte, Howison, and others) to be that of the !■ 
final step in a process of calculation in which results are stated ji 
numerically. There are branches that develop or derive quan- j. 
titative functions: say geometry for spatial forms, and me- ! 
chanics for movement and rest and the forces producing them, i' 
Other branches transform these quantitative functions into |; 
such forms as may be calculated in actual numbers; namely, i; 
algebra in its common or lower form, and in its higher -form ■; 
as the differential and integral calculus, and the calculus of |i 
variations. Arithmetic evaluates or finds the numerical value i, 
for the functions thus deduced and transformed. The educa- ' 
tional value of arithmetic is thus indicated both as concerns ■[ 
its psychological side and its objective practical uses in correl- . 
ating man with the world of nature. In this latter respect as ■ 
furnishing the key to the outer world in so far as the objects i; 
of the latter are a matter of direct enumeration, — capable of j 
being counted, — it is the first great step in the conquest ot\, 
nature. ^° | 

It is the first tool of thought that man invents in the work | 
of emancipating himself, from thraldom to external forces. ■ 
For by the command of number he learns to divide and con- •'. 
quer. He can proportion one force to another, and concen- -^ 
trate against an obstacle precisely what is needed to overcome i 
it. Number also makes possible all the other sciences of na--| 
ture which depend on exact measurement and exact record of '^ 
phenomena as to the following items: order of succession, date, 
duration, locality, environment, extent of sphere of influence, 
number of manifestations, number of cases of intermittence. 
All these can be defined accurately only by means of number. 
The educational value of a branch of study that furnishes the 

^5 Arithmetic is the science of the numerical valuation of quantity. 
As an art it is finding how many times the unit of measure can be ap- 
plied. The correlation between arithmetic and social life is so evident 
that, In the past, a large portion of the pupil's time has been spent in 
mastering it. 



Correlation of Studies. 21 

indispensable first step toward all science of nature is obvious. 
But psychologically its importance further appears in this, 
that it begins with an important step in analysis; namely, the 
detachment of the idea of quantity from the concrete whole 
which includes quality as well as quantity. To count, one 
drops the qualitative and considers only the quantitative 
aspect. So long as the individual differences (which are quali- 
tative in so far as they distinguish one object from another) are 
considered, the objects cannot be counted together. When 
counted, the distinctions are dropped out of sight as indiffer- 
ent. As counting is the fundamental operation of arithme- 
tic, and all other arithmetical operations are simply devices 
for speed by using remembered countings instead of going 
through the detailed work again each time, the hint is furnished 
the teacher for the first lessons in arithmetic. This hint has 
been generally followed out and the child set at work at first 
upon the counting of objects so much alike that the qualitative 
difference is not suggested to him. He constructs gradually 
his tables of addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and 
fixes them in his memory. Then he takes his next higher 
step; namely, the apprehension of the fraction. This is an ex- 
pressed ratio of two numbers, and therefore a much more com- 
plex thought than he has met with in dealing with the simple 
numbers. In thinking five-sixths he first thinks five and then 
six, and holding these two in mind thinks the result of the first 
modified by the second. Here are three steps instead of one, 
and the result is not a simple number but an inference resting 
on an unperformed operation. This psychological analysis 
shows the reason for the embarrassment of the child on his 
entrance upon the study of fractions and the other operations 
that imply ratio. The teacher finds all his resources in the 
way of method drawn upon to invent steps and half-steps to 
aid the pupil to make continuous progress here. All these 
devices of method consists in steps by which the pupil de- 
scends to the simple number and returns to the complex. He 
turns one of the terms into a qualitative unit and thus is en- 
abled to use the other as a simple number. The pupil takes 
the denominator, for example, and makes clear his conception 
of one-sixth as his qualitative unit, then five-sixths is as clear 
to him as five oxen. But he has to repeat this return from 



22 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

ratio to simple numbers in each of the .elementary operations — 
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in the 
reduction of fractions — and finds the road long and tedious at 
best. In the case of decimal fractions the psychological process 
is more complex still; for the pupil has given him one of the 
terms, the numerator, from which he must mentally deduce 
the denominator from the position of the decimal point. This 
doubles the work of reading and recognizing the fractional 
number. But it makes addition and subtraction of fractions 
nearly as easy as that of simple numbers and assists also in 
multiplication of fractions. But division of decimals is a 
much more complex operation than that of common fractions. 

The want of a psychological analysis of these processes 
has led many good teachers to attempt decimal fractions with 
their pupils before taking up common fractions. In the end 
they have been forced to make introductory steps to aid the 
pupil and in these steps to introduce the theory of the com- 
mon fraction. They have by this refuted their own theory. ^^ 

Besides ia) simple numbers and the four operations with 
them, {h) fractions common and decimal, there is (c) a third 
step in number; namely, the theory of powers and roots. It is 

i^This distinction between the qualitative and the quantitative 
unit is important to the understanding of this discussion of the educa- 
tional value of arithmetic. A member of this sub-committee, Mr. 
Greenwood, dissents from the statement here made that a fraction is 
much more difficult *for the ehild to comprehend than an integer, be- 
cause in thinking a fraction three steps are involved. He aflSrms that 
the child gets the idea of half, third, etc., even before entering school. 
This is true, but the half which he thinks is a qualitative unit and not 
a fraction. It is one of the two equal parts of some concrete thing. 
The two units called halves make up the one unit called a whole. A 
fraction proper is the ratio between two numbers. It is the ratio of 5 
to 6, and not five of the qualitative units, each call a sixth, that 
makes a fraction. The teachings of the report are undoubtedly true 
on this point but we believe that the child does all his thinking of frac- 
tions for some years by the use of qualitative units. If that be true, 
Mr. Greenwood's objection to the method suggested in the report is 
well taken. To apprehend what is involved in the word "ratio" re- 
quires the maturity of 7th and 8th grade pupils, and by this report, 
these have finished the study of arithmetic. 

The discussion of the relation of arithmetic to algebra, geometry, 
and mechanics, in the first part of this section on arithmetic, is of 
great value and very suggestive, and ought to be understood by every 
teacher, even if some time and study are required to master it. 



Correlation of Studies. 23 

a further step in ratio, namely the relation of a simple num- 
ber to itself as power and root. The mass of material which 
fills the arithmetic used in the elementary school consists of 
two kinds of examples, first, those wherein there is a direct 
application of simple numbers, fractions, and powers, and sec- 
ondly the class of examples involving operations in reaching 
numerical solutions through indirect data and consequently 
involving more or less transformation of functions. Of this 
character is most of the so-called higher arithmetic and such 
problems in the text-book used in the elementary schools as 
have, not inappropriately, been called (by General Francis A. 
Walker in his criticism on common-school arithmetic), numeri- 
cal "conundrums." Their difficulty is not found in the strictly 
arithmetical part of the process of the solution (the third phase 
above described), but rather in the transformation of the quan- 
titative function given into the function that can readily be 
calculated numerically. The transformation of functions be- 
longs strictly to algebra. Teachers who love arithmetic, and 
who have themselves success in working out the so-called 
numerical conundrums, defend with niuch earnestness the cur- 
rent practice which uses so much time for arithmetic. They 
see in it a valuable training for ingenuity and logical analysis, 
and believe that the industry which discovers arithmetical 
ways of transforming the functions given in such problems 
into plain numerical operations of adding, subtracting, multi- 
plying, or dividing is well bestowed. On the other hand the 
critics of this practice contend that there should be no merely 
formal drill in school for its own sake, and that there should 
be, always, a substantial content to be gained. ^ ^ They contend 
that the work of the pupil in transforming quantitative func- 
tions by arithmetical methods is wasted, because the pupil 
needs a more adequate expression than number for this pur- 

^''This criticism upon the practice in many good schools of making 
what is called a "thorough mastery" of one topic or subject before tak- 
ing up another is convincing and opportune. The psychological effect 
of overtraining in any field of mental activity is set forth here and else- 
where in this report with great clearness. A false idea of thorough- 
ness used to be practiced in certain normal schools where an exhaustive 
study of addition continuing for weeks was made before subtraction 
was begun, etc. The psychological principle of apperception is to fur- 
nish the key for the solution of more than one pedagogical problem, it 
is plain. 



24 Report of Committee of Fijteen. 

pose; that this has been discovered in. algebra, which enables 
him to perform with ease such quantitative transformations 
as puzzle the pupil in arithmetic. They hold, therefore, that 
arithmetic pure and simple should be abridged and elementary 
algebra introduced after the numerical operations in powers, 
fractions, and simple numbers have been mastered, together 
with their applications to the tables of weights and measures 
and to percentage and interest. In the seventh year of the 
elementary course there would be taught equations of the first 
degree and the solution of arithmetical problems that fall 
under proportion or the so-called "rule of three," together 
with other problems containing complicated conditions — those 
in partnership for example. In the eighth year quadratic 
equations could be learned, and other problems of higher arith- 
metic solved in a more satisfactory manner than by numerical 
methods. It is contended that this earlier introduction of 
algebra, with a sparing use of letters for known quantities, 
would secure far more mathematical progress than is obtained 
at present on the part of all pupils, and that it would enable 
many pupils to goon into secondary and higher education who 
arenow kept back on the plea of lack of preparation in arith- 
metic, the real difficulty in many cases being a lack of ability 
to solve algebraic problems by an inferior method. ^^ 

Your Committee would report that the practice of teaching 
two lessons daily in arithmetic, one styled "mental" or "Intel- 

^^The wisdom of the recommendation that algebra take the place 
of arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades will be questioned. It 
is true that the elementary number processes can be mastered below 
the seventh year, together with the simple applications to weights and 
measures, percentage, and interest, as the report suggests. It is also 
true that many of the "numerical conundrums" can be solved more 
easily by the numerical algebraic method suggested. But is it not a 
question whether the educational value of the study of arithmetic to 
the child is exhausted by the time he is twelve or thirteen years of age? 
The arithmetical problems are something more than "numerical 
conundrums." It is probable that most, if not all, elementary schools 
that introduce algebra will postpone it to the eighth year. There are 
some things in education that can be established only by experience, 
and it would seem that the experience of the past has confirmed the 
practice of beginning algebra at a later period than the seventh year. 
It is probable, however, that the discussion in this report will start ex- 
periment along a new line, for the purpose of testing the validity of the 
psychologic theory here set forth. 



Correlation of Studies, 25 

lectual" and the other "written" arithmetic (because its exer- 
cises are written out with pencil or pen) is still continued in 
many schools. By this device the pupil is made to give twice 
as much time to arithmetic as to any other branch. It is con- 
tended by the opponents of this practice, with some show of 
reason, that two lessons a day in the study of quantity have a 
tendency to give the mind a bent or set in the direction of 
thinking quantitatively with a corresponding neglect of the 
power to observe, and to reflect upon, qualitative and causal 
aspects. For mathematics does not take account of causes, 
but only of equality and difference in magnitude. It is fur- 
ther objected that the attempt to secure what is called thor- 
oughness in the branches taught in the elementary schools is 
often carried too far ; in fact, to such an extent as to produce 
arrested development (a sort of mental paralysis) in the 
mechanical and formal stages of growth. The mind in that 
case loses its appetite for higher methods and wider general- 
izations. The law of apperception, we are told, proves that 
temporary methods of solving problems should not be so thor- 
oughly mastered as to be used involuntarily or as a matter of 
unconscious habit, for the reason that a higher and a more 
adequate method of solution will then be found more difficult 
to acquire. The more thoroughly a method is learned, the 
more it becomes part of the mind and the greater the repug- 
nance of the mind toward a new method. For this reason 
parents and teachers discourage young children from the prac- 
tice of counting on the fingers, believing that it will cause 
much trouble later to root out this vicious habit and replace 
it by purely mental processes. Teachers should be careful, 
especially with precocious children, not to continue too long 
in the use of a process that is becoming mechanical ; for it is 
already growing into a second nature, and becoming a part of 
the unconscious apperceptive process by which the mind reacts 
against the environment, recognizes its presence, and explains 
it to itself. The child that has been overtrained in arithmetic 
reacts apperceptively against his environment chiefly by notic- 
ing its numerical relations — he counts and adds ; his other 
apperceptive reactions being feeble, he neglects qualities and 
causal relations. Another child who has been drilled in recog- 
nizing colors apperceives the shades of color to the neglect of. 



26 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

all else. A third child, excessively trained in form studies by 
the constant use of geometric solids and much practice in 
looking for the fundamental geometric forms lying at the 
basis of the multifarious objects that exists in the world, will 
as a matter of course apperceive geometric forms, ignoring 
the other phases of objects. 

It is, certainly, an advance on ^"^"^ediate sense-perception 
to be able to separate or analyze the CQ^^rete, whole expres- 
sion, and consider the quantity apart by itself. But if arrested 
mental growth takes place here the result is deplorable. That 
such arrest may be caused by too exclusive training in recog- 
nizing numerical relations is beyond a doubt. 

Your Committee believes that, with the right methods, 
and a wise use of time in preparing the arithmetic lesson in 
and out of school, five years are sufficient for the study of 
mere arithmetic — the five years beginning with the second 
school year and ending with the close of the sixth year ; and 
that the seventh and eighth years should be given to the 
algebraic method of dealing with those problems that involve 
difficulties in the transformation of quantitative indirect func- 
tions into numerical or direct quantitative data. 

Your committee, however, does not wish to be understood 
as recommending the transfer of algebra, as it is understood 
and taught in most secondary schools, to the seventh year or 
even to the eighth year of the elementary school. The algebra 
course in the secondary school, as taught to pupils in their 
fifteenth year of age, very properly begins with severe exer- 
cises with a view to discipline the pupil in analyzing complex 
literate expressions at sight and to make him able to recognize 
at once the factors that are contained in such combinations of 
quantities. The proposed seventh-grade algebra must use 
letters for the unknown quantities and retain the numerical 
form of the known quantities, using letters for these very 
rarely, except to exhibit the general form of solution or what, 
if stated in words, becomes a so-called ''rule" in arithmetic. 
This species of algebra has the character of an introduction or 
transitional step to algebra proper. The latter should be 
taught thoroughly in the secondary school. Formerly it was 
a common practice to teach elementary algebra of this sort in 
the preparatory schools and reserve for the college a study of 



Correlation of Studies. 27 

algebra proper. But in this case there was often a neglect of 
sufficient practice in factoring literate quantities, and as aeon- 
sequence the pupil suffered embarrassment in his more 
advanced mathematics, for example in analytical geometry, 
the differential calculus, and mechanics. The proposition of 
your Committee is intended to remedy the two evils already 
named : first to aid the pupils in the elementary school to 
solve, by a higher method, the more difficult problems that 
now find place in advanced arithmetic ; and secondly, to pre- 
pare the pupil for a thorough course in pure algebra in the 
secondary school. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that the so-called mental 
arithmetic should be made to alternate with written arithmetic 
for two years and that there should not be two daily lessons 
in this subject.^'* 

G. Geography. 

The leading branch of the seven liberal arts was grammar, 
being the first of the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic). 
Arithmetic, however, led the second division, the Quadri- 
vium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). We have 
glanced at the reasons for the place of grammar as leading 
the humane studies as well as for the place of arithmetic as 
leading the nature studies. Following arithmetic as the second 
study in importance among the branches that correlate man to 
nature is geography. It is interesting to note that the old 
quadrivium of the Middle Ages included geography, under the 
title of geometry, as the branch following arithmetic in the enu- 
meration ; the subject matter of their so-called ' 'geometry "being 
chiefly an abridgment of Pliny's geography, to which were 
added a few definitions of geometric forms, something like the 
primary course in geometric solids in our elementary schools. 
So long as there has been elementary education there has been 
something of geography included. The Greek education laid 
stress on teaching the second book of Homer containing the 

^^ The wisdom of this suggestion will not be questioned by any 
unless it be by those who are specialists in arithmetic. And it is prob- 
able that the report's suggestion of a distorted apperception which is 
the result of early education and natural bent, will account for their 
dissent. 



28 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

Catalogue of the Ships and a brief fnention of the geography 
and history of all the G-reek tribes that took part in the Trojan 
War. History remains unseparated from geography and 
geometry in the Middle Ages. Geography has preserved this 
comprehensiveness of meaning as a branch of the study in the 
elementary schools down to the present day. After arith- 
metic, which treats of the abstract or general conditions of 
material existence, comes geography with a practical study of 
man's material habitat and its relations to him. It is not a 
simple science by itself, like botany or geology or astronomy, 
but a collection of sciences levied upon to describe the earth as 
the dwelling-place of man and to explain something of its more 
prominent features. About one-fourth of the material relates 
strictly to the geography, about one-half to the inhabitants, j 
their manners, customs, institutions, industries, productions, j 
and the remaining one-fourth to items drawn from the sciences j 
of mineralogy, meteorology, botany, zoology, and astronomy. ; 
This predominance of the human feature in a study ostensibly ; 
relating to physical nature, your Committee considers necessary 
and entirely justifiable. The child commences with what is . 
nearest to his interests, and proceeds gradually toward what is . 
remote and to be studied for its own sake. It is, therefore, a 
mistake to suppose that the first phase of geography presented 
to the child should be the process of continent formation. He 
must begin with the natural differences of climate and lands 
and waters and obstacles that separate peoples, and study the 
methods by which man strives to equalize or overcome these • 
differences by industry and commerce, to unite all places and all 
people, and make it possible for each to share in the productions 
of all. The industrial and commercial idea is therefore the 
first central idea in the study of geography in the elenentary 
schools. It leads directly to the natural elements of difference 
in climate, soil, and productions, and also to those in race, 
religion, political status, and occupations of the inhabitants, 
with a view to explain the grounds and reasons for this 
counter-process of civilization which struggles to overcome the 
differences. Next comes the deeper inquiry into the process 
of continent formation, the physical struggle between the 
process of upheaving or upbuilding of continents and that of 
their obliteration by air and water; the explanation of the ' 



Correlation of Studies. 29 

mountains, valleys, and plains, the islands, volcanic action, the 
winds, the rain-distribution. But the study of cities, their 
location, the purposes they serve as collecting, manufacturing, 
and distributing centers, leads most directly to the immediate 
purpose of geography in the elementary school. From this 
beginning, and holding to it as a permanent interest, the in- 
quiry into causes and conditions proceeds concentrically to 
the sources of the raw materials, the methods of their produc- 
tion and the climatic, geologic, and other reasons that explain 
their location and their growth. 

In recent years, especially through the scientific study of 
physical geography, the processes that go to the formation of 
•climate, soil, and general configuration of land masses have 
been accurately determined, and the methods of teaching so 
simplified that it is possible to lead out from the central idea 
mentioned to the physical explanations of the elements of 
geographical difference quite early in the course of study. 
Setting out from the idea of the use made of the earth by 
civilization, the pupil in the fifth and sixth years of his school- 
ing (at the age of eleven or twelve) may extend his inquiries 
quite profitably as far as the physical explanations of land- 
shapes and climates. In the seventh and eighth year of school 
much more may be done in this direction. But it is believed 
that the distinctively human interest connected with geog- 
raphy in the first years of its study should not yield to the 
purely scientific one of physical processes until the pupil has 
taken up the study of history. 

The educational value of geography, as it is and has been 
in elementary schools, is obviously very great. It makes pos- 
sible something like accuracy in the picturing of distant places 
and events and removes a large tract of mere superstition from 
the mind. In the days of newspaper reading one's stock of 
geographical information is in constant requisition. A war on 
the opposite side of the globe is followed with more interest in 
this year than a war near our own borders before the era of 
the telegraph. The general knowledge of the locations and 
boundaries of nations, of their status in civilization and their 
natural advantages for contributing to the world market, is of 
great use to the citizen in forming correct ideas from his daily 
reading. 



30 Report of Committee of Fifteen, 

The educational value of geography is even more apparent 
if we admit the claims of those who argue that the present 
epoch is the beginning of an era in which public opinion is 
organized into a ruling force by the agency of periodicals and 
books. Certainly neither the newspaper nor the book can influ- 
ence an illiterate people; they can do little to form opinions 
where the readers have no knowledge of geography. ^^ 

As to the psychological value of geography little need be 
said. It exercises in manifold ways the memory of forms and 
the imagination; it brings into exercise the thinking power in 
tracing back toward unity the various series of causes. What 
educative value there is in geology, meteorology, zoology, 
ethnology, economics, history, and politics is to be found in 
the more profound study of geography, and, to a proportionate 
extent, in the study of its merest elements. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that there has been a 
vast improvement in the methods of instruction in this branch 
in recent years, due in large measure to the geographical soci- 
eties of this and other countries. At first there prevailed 
what might be named sailor geography. The pupil was com- 
pelled to memorize all the capes and headlands, bays and har- 
bors, mouths of rivers, islands, sounds, and straits around the 

20The doctrine of this section upon the educative value of geogra- 
phy and its relation to human life will be accepted by most teachers. 
The elementary school must study the earth as the home of man. This 
gives emphasis to the industrial and commercial features of the study. 
The teachings of the report are in substantial accord with those of the 
Herbartians. We study physical geography that we may know better 
our fellow men and our relations to them. The relation of this branch 
to history on the one side and to science on the other is a notable ex- 
ample of that idea of correlation which would teach each subject in 
the light of the knowledge of all others to which it is naturally related. 
The social order combines geography, history, natural science, the in- 
dustries, and the characteristics of the people into a very close unity. 
The Herbartians and all good teachers demand that this unity shall be 
recognized in the school. The demands that some are making to have 
the emphasis placed upon the nature element rather than upon the 
human element are not sanctioned by this report. Geography is in part 
a natural-science study and in part a sociological study. Sociology and 
nature are so intimately related in it that much of the latter must be 
known in order to understand the former. The time has certainly 
come for expunging much of the "sailor geography" from our course of 
instruction. 



Correlation of Studies, 31 

world. He enlivened this to some extent by brief mention of 
the curiosities and oddities in the way of cataracts, water-gaps, 
caves, strange animals, public buildings, picturesque costumes, 
national exaggerations, and such matters as would furnish 
good themes for sailors' yarns. Little or nothing was taught 
to give unity to the isolated details furnished in endless num- 
ber. It was an improvement on this when the method of mem- 
orizing capital cities and political boundaries succeeded. With 
this came the era of map drawing. The study of watersheds 
and commercial routes, of industrial productions and centers 
of manufacture and commerce, has been adopted in the better 
class of schools. Instruction in geography is growing better 
by the constant introduction of new devices to make plain and 
intelligible the determining influence of physical causes in pro- 
ducing the elements of difference and the counter-process of 
industry and commerce by which each difference is rendered 
of use to the whole world and each locality made a participator 
in the productions of all.^^ 

2iThe program of studies on a following page, recommends that a 
text-book in geography be used after the middle of the third year. The 
wisdom of this suggestion will depend upon the kind of text-book used. 
The doctrine of the author of this report is that children shall begin the 
use of text-books early in the study of all subjects, in order that they may 
acquire ability to interpret the printed page as soon as possible. It is 
true that a good teacher can lead the pupils to make a profitable use of 
the book early in their school course. The dead formalism that is 
blighting the schools throughout the country results from the use of 
text-books by poor teachers. If these teachers (?) were deprived of the 
book 1hey would be compelled to invent some other method of teaching 
than that of giving a certain portion of the text to be learned by rote 
each day. Any change from this lifeless, memoriter grind would be for 
the better. Assuming that the teacher knows how to use a book it is 
not important to set any limit to the time of introducing it. This 
question is one of method, and the condition must always determine the 
method. 

One is tempted to call attention again to a seeming inconsistency 
in this report which puts a text-book in geography into the hands of 
the pupi4 when he is not able (according to the teachings of it on lan- 
guage studies), to read any other than a colloquial vocabulary. Every 
text-book uses words that are technical and many others that do not 
belong to the child's every day conversation. But during the first three 
years of school life new words are not to be introduced for the reason 
that the child cannot learn form and content at the same time. See 
page 11. 



32 Report of Committee of Fifteen^ 

D. History. • 

The next study, ranked in order of value, for the elementary 
school is History. But, as will be seen, the value of history, 
both practically and psychologically, is less in the beginning 
and greater at the end than geography. For it relates to the 
institutions of men, and especially to the political state audits 
evolution. While biography narrates the career of the indi- 
vidual, civil history records the careers of nations. The 
nation has been compared to the individual by persons inter- 
ested in the educational value of history. Man has two selves, 
they say, the individual self, and the collective self of the 
organized state or union. The study of history is, then, the 
study of this larger, corporate, social, and civil self. The 
importance of this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its 
educational significance. For to learn this civil self is to learn 
the substantial condition which makes possible the existence 
of civilized man in all his other social combinations — the 
family, the Church, and the manifold associated activities of 
civil society. For the state protects these combinations from 
destruction by violence. It defines the limits of individual 
and associated effort, within which each endeavor re-enforces 
the endeavors of all, and it uses the strength of the whole 
nation to prevent such actions as pass beyond these safe 
limits and tend to collision with the normal action of the other 
individuals and social units. Hobbes called the state a Levi- 
athan, to emphasize its stupendous individuality and organized 
self-activity. Without this, he said, man lives in a state of 
"constant war, fear, poverty, filth, ignorance, and wretched- 
ness ; within the state dwell peace, security, riches, science, 
and happiness." The state is the collective man who "makes 
possible the rational development of the individual man, like 
a mortal God, subduing his caprice and passion and compelling 
obedience to law, developing the ideas of justice, virtue, and 
religion, creating property and ownership, nurture and educa- 
tion." The education of the child into a knowledge of this 
higher self begins early within the nurture of the family. 
The child sees a policeman or some town officer, some public 
building, a court house or a jail ; he sees or hears of an act of 
violence, a case of robbery or murder followed by arrest of the 
guilty. The omnipresent higher self, which has been invisible 



Correlation of Studies, 33 

hitherto, now becomes visible to him in its symbols and still 
more in its acts. 

History in school, it is contended, should be the special 
branch for education in the duties of citizenship. There is 
ground for this claim. History gives a sense of belonging to 
a higher social unity which possesses the right of absolute 
control over person and property in the interest of the safety 
of the whole. This, of course, is the basis of citizenship ; the 
individual must feel this or see this solidarity of the state and 
recognize its supreme authority. But history shows the col- 
lisions of nations, and the victory of one political ideal accom- 
panied by the defeat of another. History reveals an evolution 
of forms of government that are better and better adapted to 
permit individual freedom, and the participation of all citizens 
in the administration of the government itself. 

People who make their own government have a special 
interest in the spectacle of political evolution as exhibited in 
history. But it must be admitted that this evolution has not 
been well presented by popular historians. Take, for instance, 
the familiar example of old-time pedagogy, wherein the Roman 
republic was conceived as a freer government than the Roman 
^empire that followed it, by persons apparently misled by the 
ideas of representative self-government associated with the 
word republic. It was the beginning of a new epoch when this 
illusion was dispelled, and the college student became aware 
of the true Roman meaning of republic^ namely, the supremacy 
of an oligarchy on the Tiber that ruled distant provinces in 
Spain, Gaul, Asia Minor, Germany, and Africa, for its selfish 
•ends and with an ever-increasing arrogance. The people at 
home in Rome, not having a share in the campaigns on the 
borderland, did not appreciate the qualities of the great leaders 
who, like Caesar, subdued the nations by forbearance, magna- 
nimity, trust, and the recognition of a sphere of freedom se- 
cured to the conquered by the Roman civil laws, which were 
rigidly enforced by the conqueror, as much as by the violence 
of arms. The change from republic to empire meant the final 
subordination of this tyrannical Roman oligarchy, and the 
recognition of the rights of the provinces to Roman freedom. 
This illustration shows how easily a poor teaching of history 
may pervert its good influence or purpose into a bad one. For 



M Report of Committee of Fijteen. 

the Roman monarchy under the emp'ire secured a degree of 
freedom never before attained under the republic, in spite of 
the election of such tyrants as Nero and Caligula to the imperial 
purple. The civil service went on as usual administering the 
affairs of distant countries, educating them in Roman jurispru- 
dence, and cultivating a love for accumulating private property. 
Those countries had before lived communistically after the style 
of the tribe or at best of the village community. Roman pri- 
vate property in land gave an impulse to the development of 
free individuality such as had always been impossible under the 
social stage of development known as the village community. 

To teach history properly is to dispel this shallow illusion 
which flatters individualism, and to open the eyes of the pupil 
to the true nature of freedom, namely the freedom through 
obedience to just laws enforced by a strong government. ^^ 

Your Committee has made this apparent digression for the 
sake of a more explicit statement of its conviction of the im- 
portance of teaching history in a different spirit from that of 
abstract freedom, which sometimes means anarchy, although 
they admit the possibility of an opposite extreme, the danger 
of too little stress on the progressive element in the growth of 
nations and its manifestation in new and better political devices 
for representing all citizens without weakening the central 
power. 

That the history of one's own nation is to be taught in the 
elementary school seems fixed by common consent. United 
States history includes first a sketch of the epoch of discoveries 
and next of the epoch of colonization. This fortunately suits 
the pedagogic requirements. For the child loves to approach 
the stern realities of a firmly established civilization through 
its stages of growth by means of individual enterprise. Here 
is the use of biography as introduction to history. It treats 
of exceptional individuals whose lives bring them in one way 

2 2 The reader will take note that the studies in the order of their 
educational values are Language studies, Arithmetic, Geography, and 
History. Language and Literature introduce to human science and art. 
Arithmetic to the science of nature, and Geography occupies both 
fields. We now approach History which is an account of the greatest 
of human institutions, the state. This able analysis of the idea of the 
state is valuable to the student for other reasons than that it suggests 
the true spirit in which history should be taught. 



Correlation of Studies, 35 

or another into national or even world-historical relations. 
They throw light on the nature and necessity of governments, 
and are in turn illuminated by the light thrown back on them 
by the institutions which they promote or hinder. The era of 
semi-private adventure with which American history begins is 
admirably adapted for study by the pupil in the elementary 
stage of his education. So too the next epoch, that of coloni- 
zation. The pioneer is a degree nearer to civilization than is the 
explorer and discoverer. In the colonial history the pupil in- 
terests himself in the enterprise of aspiring individualities, in 
their conquest over obstacles of climate and soil; their conflicts 
with the aboriginal population; their choice of land for settle- 
ment; the growth of their cities; above all, their several at- 
tempts and final success in forming a constitution securing 
local self-government. An epoch of growing interrelation of 
the colonies succeeds, a tendency to union on a large scale 
due to the effect of European wars which involved England, 
France, and other countries, and affected the relations of their 
colonies in America. This epoch too abounds in heroic per- 
sonalities, like Wolfe, Montcalm, and Washington, and perilous 
adventures, especially in the Indian warfare. ^^ 

The fourth epoch is the Revolution, by which the Colonies 
through joint effort secured their independence and afterward 
their union in a nation. The subject grows rapidly more com- 
plex and tasks severely the powers of the pupils in the eighth 
year of the elementary school. The formation of the Consti- 
tution, and a brief study of the salient features of the Con- 
stitution itself, conclude the study of the portion of the history 
of the United States that is sufficiently remote to be treated 
after the manner of an educational classic. Everything up to this 

23The emphasis placed upon pioneer history and the stories of the 
adventures of the heroes who discovered and explored America, as an 
introduction to the study of the history of the growth of the American 
commonwealth, is In harmony with the teaching of history in the best 
schools at the present time. The new movement in education, in- 
cluding all the schools of reformers, is in full accord with the doctrine 
here set forth. The Herbartians carry the thought a step further and 
urge that when any particular section of the union, as, for instance, 
the Mississippi valley, or New England, or the gulf region, has an es- 
pecially rich and interesting pioneer history, the schools should begin 
with the stories of the heroes of their respective sections and proceed 
from that as a starting point to the history of other sections. 



3^6 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

point stands out in strong individual outlines and is admirably 
fitted for that elementary course of study. Beyond this point, 
the War of 1812 and the War of the Rebellion, together with 
the political events that led to it, are matters of memory with 
the present generation of parents and grandparents, and are 
consequently not so well fitted for intensive study in school as 
the already classic period of our history. But these later and 
latest epochs may be and will be read at home not only in the 
text-book on history used in the schools, but also in the nu- 
merous sketches that appear in newspapers, magazines, and in 
more pretentious shapes. In the intensive study which should 
be undertaken of the classic period of our history, the pupil 
may be taught the method appropriate to historical investiga- 
tion, the many points of view from which each event ought to 
be considered. He should learn to discriminate between the 
theatrical show of events and the solid influences that move 
underneath as ethical causes. Although he is too immature 
for very far-reaching reflections, he must be helped to see the 
causal processes of history. Armed with this discipline in 
historic methods, the pupil will do all of his miscellaneous read- 
ing and thinking in this province with more adequate intellec- 
tual reaction than was possible before the intensive study 
carried on in school.^* 

The study of the outlines of the Constitution, for ten or 
fifteen weeks in the final year of the elementary school, has 
been found of great educational value. Properly taught, it 
fixes the idea of the essential threefoldness of the constitution 
of a free government and the necessary independence of each 
constituent power, whether legislative, judicial, or executive. 

24This distinction made between the "classic" period in our history 
and that which has not yet become classic, will be regarded by many as 
a little overdrawn. But the thorough mastery of this "classic" pe- 
riod as a cultivation of the historic sense through which our more mod- 
ern history will be better comprehended, is sound pedagogy. 

This report on the value of history is one of great ability and sug- 
gestiveness. It touches the field of method very lightly, and for that 
reason, perhaps, will he generally accepted without protest. Method 
has not yet become sufficiently "classic" to admit of such treatment as 
will bring all to one conclusion. It is when this report leaves the dis- 
-cussion of educational values and enters the realm of method for the 
realizing of the values in the education of the child that we begin to 
hear protests against its teachings. 



Correlation of Studies, 37 

This and some idea of the manner and mode of filling the offi- 
cial places in these three departments, and of the character of 
the duties with which each department is charged, lay founda- 
tions for an intelligent citizenship. 

Besides this intensive study of the history of the United 
States in the seventh and eighth years, your committee would 
recommend oral lessons on thesalient points of general history, 
taking a full hour of sixty minutes weekly — and preferably all 
at one time — for the sake of the more systematic treatment of 
the subject of the lesson and the deeper impression made on 
the mind. of the pupil. 

E. Other branches. 

Your committee has reviewed the staple branches of the 
elementary course of study in the light of their educational 
scope and significance. Grammar, literature, arithmetic, geog- 
raphy, and history are the five branches upon which the dis- 
ciplinary work of the elementary school is concentrated. Inas- 
much as reading is the first of the scholastic arts, it is 
interesting to note that the whole elementary course may be 
described as an extension of the process of learning the art of 
reading. First comes the mastering of the colloquial vocabu- 
lary in printed and script forms. Next come five incursions 
into the special vocabularies required {a) in literature to 
express the fine shades of emotion and the more subtle distinc- 
tions of thought, {h) the technique of arithmetic, (c) of geog- 
raphy, {d) of grammar, {e) of history. 

In the serious work of mastering these several technical 
vocabularies the pupil is assigned daily tasks that he must pre- 
pare by independent study. The class exercise or recitation 
is taken up with examining and criticising the pupil's oral 
statements of what he has learned, especial care being taken 
to secure the pupil's explanation of it in his own words. This 
requires paraphrases and definitions of the new words and 
phrases used in technical and literary senses, with a view to 
insure the addition to the mind of the new ideas corresponding 
to the new words. The misunderstandings are corrected and 
the pupil set on the way to use more critical alertness in the 
preparation of his succeeding lessons. The pupil learns as 



;38 Report of Committee of Fijteen. 

much by the recitations of his fellow-pupils as he learns from 
the teacher, but not the same things. He sees in the imper- 
fect statements of his classmates that they apprehended the 
lesson with different presuppositions and consequently have 
seen some phases of the subject that escaped his observation, 
while they in turn have missed points which he had noticed 
quite readily. These different points of view become more or 
less his own, and he may be said to grow by adding to his own 
mind the minds of others. 

It is clear that there areother branches of instruction that 
may lay claim to a place in the course of stujiy of the elemen- 
tary school; for example, the various branches of natural 
science, vocal music, manual training, physical culture, draw- 
ing, etc. 

Here the question of another method of instruction is sug- 
gested. There are lessons that require previous preparation 
by the pupil himself — there are also lessons that may be taken 
up without such preparation and conducted by the teacher, 
who leads the exercise and furnishes a large part of the infor- 
mation to be learned, enlisting the aid of members of the class 
for the purpose of bringing home the new material to their 
actual experience. Besides these there are mechanical exer- 
cises for purposes of training, such as drawing, penmanship, 
and calisthenics. 

In the first place there is industrial and aesthetic drawing, 
which should have a place in all elementary school work. By 
it is secured the training of the hand and eye. Then, too, 
drawing helps in all the other branches that require illustra- 
tion. Moreover, if used in the study of the great works of art 
in the way hereinbefore mentioned, it helps to cultivate the 
taste and prepares the future workman for a more useful and 
lucrative career, inasmuch as superior taste commands higher 
wages in the finishing of all goods. ^^ 

25This report distinguishes between the five disciplinary studies 
and the other branches that are valuable for the practical information 
they give. The ground for this distinction may lie in the fact that the 
five studies (grammar, literature, arithmetic, geography, and history) 
represent what the author has elsewhere called the five great depart- 
ments of human knowledge. That is, they represent the five distinct 
fields of activity in the world, viz: thought, art, inorganic nature, or- 
ganic nature, and society. The thorough mastery of these branches 



Correlation of Studies. 39 

Natural science claims a place in the elementary school 
not so much as a disciplinary study side by side with grammar, 
arithmetic, and history, as a training in habits of observation 
and in the use of the technique by which such sciences are ex- 
pounded. With a knowledge of the technical terms and some 
training in the methods of original investigation employed in 
the sciences, the pupil broadens his views of the world and 
greatly increases his capacity to acquire new knowledge. For 
the pupil who is unacquainted with the technique of science 
has to pass without mental profit the numerous scientific 
allusions and items of information which more and more 
abound in all our literature, whether of an ephemeral or a 
permanent character. In an age whose proudest boast is the 
progress of science in all domains, there should be in the ele- 
mentary school, from the first, a course in the elements of the 
sciences. And this is quite possible; for each science 
possesses some phases that lie very near to the child's life. 

organizes the individual mind in harmony with human civilization. In 
the language of the Herbartians the "concept-mass," or the self, be- 
comes attuned to the movement of the external world of nature and 
society. This is what we common people mean by the "formation of 
character." Discipline is the name of the process by which the mind 
becomes thus organized and tendencies and habits of action estab- 
lished. The ground upon which the Ave studies named are distin- 
guished as disciplinary above others seems to be that a larger share of 
the energies of the pupil are devoted to learning them. In other 
words, "as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." But it must be true that 
every knowledge activity that enters into the organization of the self 
In education must perform its part in building character and thus be 
disciplinary. That idea which seemed once to prevail, that discipline 
was for forraing the child's mind, and that it was to be filled subse- 
quently with a content that should be of practical use in life does not 
now prevail. It would be a misfortune if any one should interpret this 
report to mean other than that all of the educative efforts of the school 
are disciplinary and help in the formation of character. Of course, 
there is great difference between the disciplinary value of that study 
in which the pupil solves his own difificuUies and that teaching in 
which the teacher accompanies the pupil, supplying the needed in- 
formation or suggestion at every step of his progress. The latter is 
not worth much for character building, for the reason that it is not apt 
to become a part of the organized self. There is much of knowledge or 
information, so-called, that is simply the present possession of the car- 
rying memory and never becomes assimilated with the self. It may be 
of temporary use but is not of permanent value. The school cannot 
afford to expend much energy in acquiring such knowledge. 



40 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

These familiar topics furnish the doors through which the 
child enters the various special departments. Science, it is 
claimed, is nothing if not systematic. Indeed, science itself 
may be defined as the interpretation of each fact through all 
other facts of a kindred nature. Admitting that this is so, it 
is no less true that pedagogic method begins with the frag- 
mentary knowledge possessed by the pupil and proceeds to 
organize it and build it out systematically in all directions. 
Hence any science may be taken up best on the side nearest 
the experience of the pupil and the investigation continued 
until the other parts are reached. Thus the pedagogical order 
is not always the logical or scientific order. In this respect it 
agrees with the order of discovery, which is usually something 
quite different from the logical order, for that is the last thing 
discovered. The natural sciences have two general divisions: 
one relating to inorganic matter, as physics and chemistry, 
and one relating to organic, as botany and zoology. There 
should be a spiral course in natural science, commencing each 
branch with the most interesting phases to the child. A first 
course should be given in botany, zoology, and physics, so as 
to treat of the structure and uses of familiar plants and ani- 
mals, and the explanation of physical phenomena as seen in 
the child's playthings, domestic machines, etc. A second 
course covering the same subjects, but laying more stress on 
classification and functions, will build on to the knowledge 
already acquired from the former lessons and from his recently 
acquired experience. A third course of weekly lessons, con- 
ducted by the teacher as before in a conversational style, with 
experiments and with a comparison of the facts of observation 
already in the possession of the children, will go far to help- 
ing them to an acquisition of the results of natural science. 
Those of the children specially gifted for observation in some 
one or more departments of nature will be stimulated and en- 
couraged to make the most of their gifts. 

In the opinion of your Committee there should be set 
apart a full hour each week for drawing and the same amount 
for oral lessons in natural science. 

The oral lessons in history have already been mentioned. 
The spiral course, found useful in natural science because of 
the rapid change in capacity of comprehension by the pupil 



Correlation of Studies, 41 

from his sixth to his fourteenth year, will also be best for the 
history course, which will begin with biographical adventures 
of interest to the child, and possessing an important historical 
bearing. These will proceed from the native land first to Eng- 
land, the parent country, and then to the classic civilizations 
(G-reece and Rome being, so to speak, the grandparent coun- 
tries of the American colonies). These successive courses of 
oral lessons adapted respectively to the child's capacity will do 
much to make the child well informed on this topic. Oral 
lessons should never be mere lectures, but more like Socratic 
dialogues, building up a systematic knowledge partly from 
what is already known, partly by new investigations, and 
partly by comparison of authorities. 

The best argument in favor of oral weekly lessons in nat- 
ural science and general history is the actual experiences of 
teachers who have for some time used the plan. It has been 
found that the lessons in botany, zoology, and physics give 
the pupil much aid in learning his geography and other les- 
sons relating to nature, while the history lessons assist very 
much his comprehension of literature, and add interest to 
geography. ^^ 

2 6But most educationists will object to including natural science, 
vocal music, manual training, physical culture, and drawing in the eph- 
emeral knowledge described in the preceding paragraph. The educa- 
tional value of these is stated, or clearly implied, in the text of the report. 
But there will be not a little dissent from the method suggested for realiz- 
ing these values in theschool. One exercise per week of sixty minutes dur- 
ation does not seem to be the best arrangement, even though some have 
found it to be valuable. (See program.) It is better than nothing, without 
doubt. But that any discipline, or character, either physical or mental, 
shall result from these studies, there is need of a more frequent return 
to them than one oral lesson per week implies. Perhaps sixty minutes 
per week may be all the school time that the program will permit, but 
it will be better that this hour shall be broken up into twenty-minute 
recitations three times per week. Nor will sixty minutes include all of 
the time during the week which the pupils should devote to such a 
study as natural science. A teacher that can use, profitably, one hour 
for a single recitation in a week can use three periods of twenty min- 
utes each to a much better advantage, in an elementary school. 

It is through frequent return to a subject, and intense activity 
upon it for short periods, that it "soaks in" and becomes influential in 
the building of character. Especially is this true if the principles of 
apperception and concentration are not forgotten by the teacher in 
working upon the "disciplinary" subjects. 



I 

42 Report of Committee of Fifteen. \ 

It is understood by your Committee that the lessons in | 
physiology and hygiene (with special reference to the effects | 
of stimulants and narcotics) required by State laws should be ■ 
included in this oral course in natural science. Manual train- ! 
ing, so far as the theory and use of the tools for working in i 
wood and iron are concerned, has just claims on the elementary i 
school for a reason similar to that which admits natural sci- ; 
ence. From science have proceeded useful inventions for the \ 
aid of all manner of manufactures and transportation. The : 
child of today lives in a world where machinery is constantly ; 
at his hand. A course of training in wood and iron work, to- \ 
gether with experimental knowledge of physics or natural phi- j 
losophy, makes it easy for him to learn the management of such I 
machines. Sewing and cookery have not the same but stronger 
claims for a place in school. One-half day in each week for 
one-half a year each in the seventh and eighth grades will suf- 
fice for manual training, the sewing and cookery being studied 
by the girls, and the wood and iron-work by the boys. It 
should be mentioned, however, that the advocates of manual 
training in iron and wood-work recommend these branches for 
secondary schools, because of the greater maturity of body, 
and the less likelihood to acquire wrong habits of manipulation, 
in the third period of four years of school. 

Vocal music has long since obtained a well-established 
place in all elementary schools. The labors of two generations 
of special teachers have reduced the steps of instruction to 
such simplicity that whole classes may make as regular prog- 
ress in reading music as in reading literature. 

In regard to physical culture your Committee is agreed 
that there should be some form of special daily exercises 
amounting in the aggregate to one hour each week, the same 
to include the main features of calisthenics, and G-erman, Swed- 
ish, or American systems of physical training, but not to be 
regarded as a substitute for the old-fashioned recess estab- 
lished to permit the free exercise of the pupils in the open air. 
Systematic physical training has for its object rather the will 
training than recreation, and this must not be forgotten. To 
go from a hard lesson to a series of calisthenic exercises is to 
go from one kind of will training to another. Exhaustion of 
the will should be followed by the caprice and wild freedom of' 



Correlation of Studies. 43 

the recess. But systematic physical exercise has its sufficient 
reason in its aid to a graceful use of the limbs, its develop- 
ment of muscles that are left unused or rudimentary unless 
called forth by special training, and for the help it gives to the 
teacher in the way of school discipline. 

Your Committee would mention in this connection instruc- 
tion in morals and manners, which ought to be given in a brief 
series of lessons each year with a view to build up in the mind 
a theory of the conventionalities of polite and pure-minded 
society. If these lessons are made too long or too numerous, 
they are apt to become offensive to the child's mind. It is of 
course understood by your Committee that the substantial 
moral training of the school is performed by the discipline 
rather than by the instruction in ethical theory. The child is 
trained to be regular and punctual, and to restrain his desire 
to talk and whisper — in these things gaining self-control day 
by day. The essence of moral behavior is self-control. The 
school teaches good behavior. The intercourse of a pupil with 
his fellows without evil words or violent actions is insisted on 
and secured. The higher moral qualities of truth-telling and 
sincerity are taught in every class exercise that lays stress on 
accuracy of statement. 

Your Committee has already discussed the importance of 
teaching something of algebraic processes in the seventh and 
eighth grades with the view to obtaining better methods of 
solving problems in advanced arithmetic; a majority of your 
Committee are of the opinion that formal English grammar 
should be discontinued in the eighth year, and the study of 
some foreign language, preferably that of Latin, substituted. 
The educational effect on an English-speaking pupil of taking 
up a language which, like Latin, uses inflections instead of 
prepositions, and which further differs from English by the 
order in which its words are arranged in the sentence, is quite 
marked, and a year of Latin places a pupil by a wide interval 
out of the range of the pupil who has continued English gram- 
mar without taking up Latin. But the effect of the year's 
study of Latin increases the youth's power of apperception in 
very many directions by reason of the fact that so much of the 
English vocabulary used in technical vocabularies, like those 
of geography, grammar, history, and literature, is from a Latin 



44 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

source, and besides there are so many traces m the form and 
substance of human learning of the hundreds of years when 
Latin was the only tongue in which observation and reflection 
could be expressed. ^^ 

Your Committee refers to the program given later in this 
report for the details of co-ordinating these several branches 
already recommended. 

The dijference between elementary and secondary studies. 

In recommending the introduction of algebraic processes 
in the seventh and eighth years — as well as in the recom- 
mendation just now made to introduce Latin in the eighth 

2'Perhaps the most startling innovation in this report is that which 
substitutes Latin for English Grammar in the eighth grade. Dr. Har- 
ris has frequently affirmed that if one hundred young men of equal 
ability were to start a new colony, fifty of whom had spent six months 
in the study of Latin, while the others had studied some other subject 
instead, the fifty who had studied Laiin would soon occupy all the leg- 
islative, judicial, and executive departments of the government. This 
seems to most persons to be a very extraordinary statement. Lan- 
guage forms partake in a measure of the genius of the people who in- 
vent them, it is true, but will they innoculate another and alien people 
with that genius simply by a six months' study of them? Ideas, knowl- 
edge, feeling, are practically the same in all men. Is it not an undue 
appreciation of the influence of form, which gives to one nation the in- 
dividual characteristics of another "merely through a six month's 
study of the other's language?" 

There is a less occult reason for learning the Latin in the fact that 
the English is so largely composed of Latin words. By learning the 
concrete meanings of these words in the Latin tongue, the English 
words cease to be mere abstract dead symbols, and become filled with 
their original concrete meaning. This is a sufficient reason for one 
who would know the English to study the Latin, and if he is to make 
an extended study of science he ought to have some knowledge of the 
Greek for a similar reason. 

The recommendation of the committee that Latin be substituted 
for English Grammar in the eighth grade will not be generally ac- 
cepted in that form. It is probable that the influence of this report 
will start a line of reflection in the minds of the educational public 
which will result in giving more prominence to the study of the history 
and derivation of words and the mastery of Latin roots in the grammar 
grades. We cannot think that the peculiar /orm of the Latin sentence 
will do more for the pupil than the form of the German sentence would 
do, and the influence of either is not great. Would it not be better to 
advance natural science to a "disciplinary" study than to introduce 
Latin into the elementary school as such a study? 



Correlation of Studies. 45 

year of the elementary course — your Committee has come face 
to face with the question of the intrinsic difference between 
elementary and secondary studies. 

Custom has placed algebra, geometry, the history of 
English literature, and Latin in the rank of secondary studies; 
also general history, physical geography, and the elements of 
physics and chemistry. In a secondary course of four years, 
trigonometry may be added to the mathematics; some of the 
sciences whose elements are used in physical geography may 
be taken up separately in special treatises, as geology, botany, 
and physiology. There may be also a study of whole works of 
English authors, as Shakspere, Milton, and Scott. Greek is 
also begun in the second or third year of the secondary course. 
This is the custom in most public high schools. But in pri- 
vate secondary schools Latin is begun earlier, and so, too, 
Greek, algebra, and geometry. Sometimes geometry is taken 
up before algebra, as is the custom in German schools. These 
arrangements are based partly on tradition, partly on the 
requirements of higher institutions for admission, and partly 
on the ground that the intrinsic difficulties in these studies 
have fixed their places in the course of study. Of those who 
claim that there is an intrinsic reason for the selection and 
order of these studies, some base their conclusions on experi- 
ence in conducting pupil's through them, others on psycholog- 
ical grounds. The latter contend, for example, that algebra 
deals with general forms of calculation, while arithmetic deals 
with the particular instances of calculation. Whatever deals 
with the particular instance is relatively elementary, whatever 
deals with the general form is relatively secondary. In the 
expression a4-b=c algebra indicates the form of all addition. 
This arithmetic cannot do, except in the form of a verbal rule 
describing the steps of the operation; its examples are all 
special instances falling under the general form given in 
algebra. If, therefore, arithmetic is an elementary branch, 
algebra is relatively to it a secondary branch. So, too, geom- 
etry, though not directly based on arithmetic, has to presup- 
pose an acquaintance with it when it reduces spatial functions 
into numerical forms, as, for example, in the measurement of 
surfaces and solids, and in ascertaining the ratio of the cir- 
eumference to the radius, and of the hypotenuse to the two 



46 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

other sides of the right-angled triangle. Geometry, more- 
over, deals with necessary relations; its demonstrations reach 
universal and necessary conclusions, holding good not merely 
in such material shapes as we have met with in actual experi- 
ence, but with all examples possible, past, present, or future. 
Such knowledge transcending experience is intrinsically sec- 
ondary as compared with the first acquaintance with geometric 
shapes in concrete examples. 

In the case of geometry it is claimed by some that what is 
called "inventional geometry" may be properly introduced into 
the elementary grades. By this some mean the practice with 
blocks in the shape of geometric solids and the construction 
of different figures from the same; others mean the rediscov- 
ery by the pupil for himself of the necessary relations demon- 
strated by Euclid. The former — exercises of construction 
with blocks — are well enough in the kindergarten, where they 
assist in learning number, as well as in the analysis of ma- 
terial forms. But its educational value is small for pupils ad- 
vanced into the use of books. The original discovery of Euclid's 
demonstrations, on the other hand, belongs more properly to 
higher education than to elementary. In the geometrical text- 
books recently introduced into secondary schools, there is so 
much of original demonstration required that the teacher is 
greatly embarrassed on account of the differences in native ca- 
pacity for mathematics that develop among the pupils of the 
same class in solving the problems of invention. A few gifted 
pupils delight in the inventions, and develop rapidly in power, 
while the majority of the class use too much time over them, 
and thus rob the other branches of the course of study, or else 
fall into the bad paractice of getting help from others in the 
preparation of their lessons. A few in every class fall hope- 
lessly behind and are discouraged. The result is an attempt on 
the part of the teacher to correct the evil by requiring a more 
thorough training in the mathematical studies preceding, and 
the consequent delay of secondary pupils in the lower grades of 
the course in order to bring up their "inventional geometry." 
Many, discouraged, fail to go on; many more fail to reach 
higher studies because unable to get over the barrier unneces- 
sarily placed before them by teachers who desire that no pu- 



Correlation of /Studies. 47 

pils except natural geometricians shall enter into higher 
studies. ^^ 

Physical geography in its scientific form is very properly 
made a part of the secondary course of study. The pupil in 
his ninth year of work can profitably acquire the scientific 
technique of geology, botany, zoology, meteorology, and eth- 
nology, and in the following years take up those sciences sep- 
arately and push them further, using the method of actual 
investigation. The subject-matter of physical geography is of 
very high interest to the pupil who has studied geography in 
the elementary grades after an approved method. It takes up 
the proximate grounds and causes for the elements of differ- 
ence on the earth's surface, already become familiar to him 
through his elementary studies, and pushes them back into 
deeper, simpler, and more satisfactory principles. This study 
performs the work also of correlating the sciences that relate 
to organic nature by showing their respective uses to man. 
From the glimpses which the pupil gets of mineralogy, geol- 
ogy, botany zoology, ethnology, and meteorology in their 
necessary connection as geographic conditions he sees the 

28This paragraph involves a sharp criticism of the idea prevalent 
in high schools that pupils must reach a "passing" standard m all sub- 
jects before being allowed to pass on or pass out. A pupil that has no 
capacity for mathematics, for example, must procure one before he is 
permitted to graduate, although he may excel in other studies. This 
is another instance of the dominance of formalism in our education, 
and of a wrong conception of what is meant by harmonious develop- 
ment. Why not refuse a man the honors of society in real life merely 
because he is not a good accountant? 

It is moreover,'a stern rebuke to that educational malpractice which 
doesnotdistinguish between the elementary and thesecondary phases of 
knowledge. The elementary phase includes what may be termed the 
sense-relations of things (the kindergarten stage,) and those simpler 
and more concrete thought-relations that belong to and makeup the 
experiences of common life. This is theso-called"practical knowledge," 
so much in favor with the general public. The elementary text-books 
are supposed to occupy this field. This is the period for accumulating 
a mass of "apperceiving ideas," both of things and their relations 
which make secondary knowledge possible. Secondary knowledge is 
knowledge of the relations of relations. All knowledge is knowledge 
of relations. Whether it be elementary or secondary depends upon how 
far the relations considered are removed from the objective reality 
known as the world of nature and humanity. 



48 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

scope and grand significance of those, separate inquiries. A 
thirst is aroused in him to pursue his researches into their do- 
mains. He sees, too, the borderlands in which new discov- 
eries may be made by the enterprising explorer. 

Physics, including what was called until recently "natural 
philosophy," after Newton's Principia {Philosophice naturalis 
principia mathematica)^ implies more knowledge of mathemat- 
ics for its thorough discussion than the secondary pupil is 
likely to possess. In fact, the study of this branch in college 
thirty years ago was crippled by the same cause. It should 
follow the completion of analytical geometry. Notwithstand- 
ing this, a very profitable study of this subject may be made 
in the second year of the high school or preparatory school, 
although the formulas can then be understood in so far as they 
imply elementary algebra only. The pupil does not get the 
most exact notions of the quantitative laws that rule matter 
in its states of motion and equilibrium, but he does see the ac- 
tion of forces as qualitative elements of phenomena, and un- 
derstand quite well the mechanical inventions by which men 
subdue them for his use and safety. Even in the elementary 
grades the pupil can seize very many of these qualitative as- 
pects and learn the explanation of the mechanical phenomena 
of nature, and other applications of the same principles in in- 
vention, as for example, gravitation in falling bodies: its 
measurement by the scales; the part it plays in the pump, the 
barometer, the pendulum; cohesion in mud, clay, glue, paste, 
mortar, cement, etc.; capillary attraction in lamp- wicks, 
sponges, sugar, the sap in plants; the applications of lifting 
by the lever, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw; heat 
in the sun, combustion, friction, steam, thermometer, conduc- 
tion, clothing, cooking, etc; the phenomena of light, elec- 
tricity, magnetism, and the explanation of such mechanical 
devices as spectacles, telescopes, microscopes, prisms, photo- 
graphic cameras, electric tension in bodies, lightning, mariner's 
compass, horseshoe magnet, the telegraph, the dynamo. This 
partially qualitative study of forces and mechanical inventions 
has the educational effect of enlightening the pupil, and eman- 
cipating him from the network of superstition that surrounds 
him in the child world, partly of necessity and partly by reason 
of the illiterate adults that he sometimes meets with in the 



Correlation of Studies. 49 

persons of nurses, servants, and tradespeople, whose occupa- 
tions have more attraction for him than those of cultured people. 
The fairy world is a world of magic, of immediate interven- 
tions of supernatural spirtual beings, and while this is proper 
enough for the child up to the time of the school, and in a les- 
sening degree for some time after, it is only negative and harm- 
ful in adult manhood and womanhood. It produces arrested 
development of powers of observation and reflection in refer- 
ence to phenomena, and stops the growth of the soul at the 
infantine stage of devolpment. Neither is this infantine stage 
of wonder and magic more religious than the stage of disillu- 
sion through the study of mathematics and physics. It is the 
arrest of religious development also, at the stage of fetichism. 
The highest religion, that of pure Christianity, sees in the 
world infinite mediations, all for the purpose of developing in- 
dependent individuality; the perfection of human souls not 
only in one kind of piety, namely that of the heart, but in the 
piety of the intellect that beholds truth, the piety of the will 
that does good deeds wisely, the piety of the senses that sees 
the beautiful and realizes it in works of art. This is the Chris- 
tian idea of divine Providence as contrasted with the heathen 
idea of that Providence, and the study of natural philosophy 
is an essential educational requisite in its attainment, although 
a negative means. Of course there is danger of replacing the 
spiritual idea of the divine by the dynamical or mechanical 
idea and thus arresting the mind at the stage of pantheism 
instead of fetichism. But this danger can be avoided by fur- 
ther education through secondary into higher education, whose 
entire spirit and method are comparative and philosophical in 
the best sense of the term. For higher education seems to 
have as its province the correlation of the several branches of 
human learning in the unity of the spiritual view furnished by 
religion to our civilization. By it one learns to see each 
branch, each science or art or discipline, in the light of all the 
others. 

This higher or comparative view is essential to any com- 
pleteness of education, for it alone prevents the one-sidedness 
of hobbies, or "fads" as they are called in the slang of the 
day. It prevents also the bad effects that flow from the influ- 
ence of what are termed "self-educated men," who for the most 



50 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

part carry up with them elementary methods of study, or at 
best, secondary methods, which accentuate the facts and rela- 
tions of natural and spiritual phenomena, but do not deal with 
their higher correlations. The comparative method cannot, in 
fact, be well introduced until the student is somewhat ad- 
vanced, and has already completed his elementary course of 
study dealing with the immediate aspects of the world, and 
his secondary course dealing with the separate formal and dy- 
namical aspects that lie next in order behind the facts of first 
observation. Higher education in a measure unifies these sep- 
arate formal and dynamic aspects, corrects their one-sidedness, 
and prevents the danger of what is so often noted in the self- 
educated men who unduly exaggerate some one of the subordi- 
nate aspects of the world and make it a sort of first principle. ^^ 
Here your Committee finds in its way the question of the 
use of the full scientific method in the teaching of science in 
the elementary school. The true method has been called the 
method of investigation, but that method as used by the child 
is only a sad caricature of the method used by the mature 
scientific man, who has long since passed through the fragmen- 
tary observation and reflection that prevail in the period of 
childhood, as well as the tendencies to exaggeration of the 
importance of one or another branch of knowledge at the 
expense of the higher unity that correlates all; an exaggera- 
tion that manifests itself in the possession and use of a hobby. 
The ideal scientific man has freed himself from obstacles of 
this kind, whether psychological or objective. What astro- 
nomical observers call the subjective coefficient must be ascer- 
tained and eliminated from the record that shows beginnings, 
endings, and rates. There is a possibility of perfect speciali- 
zation in a scientific observer only after the elementary and 
secondary attitudes of mind have been outgrown. An attempt 

^^Many students and admirers of this report will regret that it 
waits to introduce this idea of correlation until the pupil reaches the 
secondary school. It should be in the mind of the teacher in every 
grade, and every grade should be taught in the light of it. The sec- 
ondary school may be the place where the child first comes to a 
full consciousness of it, but it should be in his sub-consciousness long 
before. This is the definition of correlation for which the so-called 
Herbartian movement is contending — the unification of all studies in 
the life of the individual, and the recognition of this unity in the world 



Correlation of Studies. 51 

to force the child into the full scientific method by specializa- 
tion would cause an arrest of his development in the other 
branches of human learning outside of his specialty. He could 
not properly inventory the data of his own special sphere un- 
less he knew how to recognize the defining limits or boundaries 
that separate his province from its neighbors. The early days 
of science abounded in examples of confusion of provinces in 
the inventories of their data. It is difficult, even now, to decide 
where physics and chemistry leave off, and biology begins. 

Your Committee does not attempt to state the exact pro- 
portion in which the child, at his various degrees of advance- 
ment, may be able to dispense with the guiding influence of 
teacher and text-book in his investigations, but they protest 
strongly against the illusion under which certain zealous advo- 
cates of the early introduction of scientific method seem to labor. 
They ignore in their zeal the deduction that is to be made for 
the guiding hand of the teacher, who silently furnishes to the 
child the experience that he lacks, and quietly directs his 
special attention to this or to that phase, and prevents him 
from hasty or false generalization as well as from undue exag- 
geration of single facts or principles. Here the teacher adds 
the needed scientific outlook which the child lacks, but which 
the mature scientist possesses for himself. ^° 

It is contended by some that the scientific frame of mind 
is adapted only to science, but not to art, literature, and religion, 
which have something essential that science does not reach; 
not because of the incompleteness of the sciences themselves, 
but because of the attitude of the mind assumed in the obser- 
vation of nature. In analytic investigation there is isolation of 
parts from one another, with a view to find the sources of the 

3 0The distinction involved in this discussion between the method of 
discovery and the method of instruction, in teaching elementary sci- 
ence, is an important one. The child cannot pursue the study of science 
by the method of discovery with profit until he has accumulated a body 
of apperceivingscience ideas that will guide him in his attempts at orig- 
inal discovery. Before this time he must discover (?) under the leadership 
of teacher or text-book. In other words, he must learn elementary science 
by the method of instruction which is so applied as to teach him the 
way by which he shall pursue original discovery later. The organized 
knowledge of teacher or text-book must guide him in getting ready to 
pursue the method of investigation in acquiring new knowledge. 



52 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

influences which produce the phenomeoa shown in the object. 
The mind brings everything to the test of this idea. Every 
phenomenon that exists comes from beyond itself, and analysis 
will be able to trace the source. 

Now, this frame of mind, which insists on a foreign origin 
of all that goes to constitute an object, debars itself in advance 
from the province of religion, art, and literature as well as of 
philosophy. For self-determination, personal activity, is the 
first principle assumed by religion, and it is tacitly assumed by 
art and literature, Classic and Christian. The very definition 
of philosophy implies this, for it is the attempt to explain the 
world by the assumption of a first principle, and to show that 
all classes of objects imply that principle as ultimate presuppo- 
sition. According to this view it is important not to attempt 
to hasten the use of a strictly scientific method on the part of 
the child. In his first years he is acquiring the results of 
civilization rather as an outfit of habits, usages, and traditions 
than as a scientific discovery. He cannot be expected to stand 
over against the culture of his time, and challenge one and all 
of its conventionalities to justify themselves before his reason. 
His reason is too weak. He is rather in the imitation stage 
of mind than in that of criticism. He will not reach the com- 
parative or critical method until the era of higher education. 

However this may be, it is clear that the educational 
value of science and its method is a very important question, 
and that on it depends the settlement of the question where 
specialization may begin. To commence the use of the real 
scientific method would imply a radical change also in methods 
from the beginning. This may be realized by considering the 
hold which even the kindergarten retains upon symbolism and 
upon art and literature. But in the opinion of a majority of 
your Committee natural science itself should be approached, 
in the earliest years of the elementary school, rather in the 
form of results with glimpses into the methods by which these 
results were reached. In the last two years (the seventh and 
eighth) there may be some strictness of scientific form and 
an exhibition of the method of discovery. The pupil, too, 
may to some extent put this method into practice himself. In 
the secondary school there should be some laboratory work. 
But the pupil cannot be expected to acquire for himself fully 



Correlation of /Studies. 53 

that the world and its history is a sort of antiphonic hymn in 
the scientific method of dealing with nature until the second 
part of higher education — its post-graduate work. Neverthe- 
less this good should be kept in view from the first year of the 
elementary school, and there should be a gradual and con- 
tinual approach to it. ^^ 

In the study of general history appears another branch of 
the secondary course. History of the native land is assumed 
to be an elementary study. History of the world is certainly 
a step further away from the experience of the child. It is 
held by some teachers to be in accordance with proper method 
to begin with the foreign relations of one's native land and to 
work outward to the world-history. The European relations 
involved in the discovery and colonization of America furnish 
the only explanation to a multitude of questions that the pupil 
has started in the elementary school. He should move out- 
ward from what he has already learned, by the study of a new 
concentric circle of grounds and reasons, according to this view. 
This, however, is not the usual course taken. On beginning 
secondary history the pupil is set back face to face with the 
period of tradition, just when historic traces first make their 
appearance. He is by this arrangement broken off from the 
part of history that he has become acquainted with and made 
to grapple with that period which has no relation to his pre- 
vious investigations. It is to be said, however, that general 
history lays stress on the religious thread of connection, 
though less now than formerly. The world history is a con- 
ception of the great Christian thinker, St. Augustine, who held 

^^This is an interesting discussion of the influence of the study of 
science upon the young. That a serious study of science In the ele- 
mentary and high schools debars the mind from the province of relig- 
ion, art, and literature is a startling conclusion. Is it not Dr. Harris 
himself who stoutly affirms that one of the direct roads to the insight 
that the ultimate principle of the universe is a person lies through the 
study of science? If the study of nature by a logical necessity leads to 
the conclusion that conscious self-activity is the core and essence of all 
things, we may well be startled when we are told that the study of 
science at any age debars the mind from religion. Is it not the faulty 
teaching of science that does it? Is it not because development is 
arrested by too little reference to that higher unity to which science 
points, that the study of science as a discipline in elementary and 
secondary schools tends to debar the mind from the province of 
religion? 



54- Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

which Grod reads his counsels, and the* earth and man read the 
responses. He induced Orosius, his pupil, to sketch a general 
history in the spirit of his view. It was natural that the Old 
Testament histories, and especially the chapters of Genesis, 
should furnish the most striking part of its contents. This 
general history was connected with religion and brought closer 
to the experience of the individual than the history of his own 
people. To commence history with the G-arden of Eden, the Fall 
of Man, and the Noachian Deluge was to begin with what was 
most familiar to all minds, and most instructive, because it con- 
cerned most nearly the conduct of life. Thus religion furnished 
the apperceptive material by which the early portions -of his- 
tory were recognized, classified, and made a part of experience. 
Now that studies in archaeology, especially those in the 
Nile and Euphrates valleys, are changing the chronologies and 
the records of early times and adding new records of the past, 
bringing to light national movements and collisions of peoples, 
together with data by which to determine the status of their 
industrial civilization, their religious ideas, and the form of 
their literature and art, the concentric arrangement of all this 
material around the history of the chosen people as a nucleus 
is no longer possible. The question has arisen, therefore, 
whether general history should not be rearranged for the 
secondary school, and made to connect with American history 
for apperceptive material rather than with Old Testament 
history. To this it has been replied with force that the idea 
of a world history, as St. Augustine conceived it, is the noblest 
educative ideal ever connected with the subject of history. 
Future versions of general history will not desert this stand- 
point, we are told, even if they take as their basis that of 
ethnology and anthropology, for these, too, will exhibit a plan 
in human history — an educative principle that leads nations 
toward freedom and science, because the Creator of nature 
has made it, in its fundamental constitution, an evolution or 
progressive development of individuality. Thus the idea of 
divine Providence is retained, though made more comprehen- 
sive by bringing the whole content of natural laws within his 
will as his method of work.^^ 

22The above is a new argument for the beginning of the study of 
history with the near rather than the remote. In this suggestion the 



Correlation of Studies. 55 

These considerations, we are reminded by the partisans of 
humanity studies, point back to the educative value of history 
as corrective of the one-sidedness of the method of science. 
Science seeks explanation in the mechanical conditions of, and 
impulses received from, the environment, while history keeps 
its gaze fixed on human purposes, and studies the genesis of 
national actions through the previous stages of feelings, con- 
victions, and conscious ideas. In history the pupil has for his 
object self-activity, reaction against environment, instead of 
mechanism, or activity through another. 

The history of English literature is another study of the 
secondary school. It is very properly placed beyond the ele- 
mentary school, for as taught it consists largely of the 
biographies of men of letters. The pupils who have not yet 
learned any great work of literature should not be pestered 
with literary biography, for at that stage the greatness of the 
men of letters cannot be seen. Plutarch makes great biogra- 
phies because he shows heroic struggles and great deeds. The 
heroism of artists and poets consists in sacrificing all for the 
sake of their creations. The majority of them come off sadly 
at the hands of the biographer, for the reason that the very 
sides of their lives are described which they had slighted and 
neglected for the sake of the Muses. The prophets of Israel 
did not live in city palaces, but in caves; they did not wear 
fine raiment, nor feed sumptuously, nor conform to the codes of 
polite society. They were no courtiers when they approached 

report is in accord with the teachings of the Herbartlan movement 
which would begin the study of history with the institutional life that 
is the child's environment, and proceed to the study of the pioneer life of 
that environment and from thence to the study of one's own country 
and so on to the history of ancient times. 

It is interesting to note, also, that this movement tends to begin 
the study of literature with fairy stories and the legendary tales of 
ancient times. The fanciful and imaginary, was the stage of develop- 
ment of literature among the ancients. Hegel calls the Greek period 
the boyhood of the race. There is something, as has been said before, 
in this idea of culture epochs that can be made useful in education. 
How much, it remains yet to be seen. But the idea of this movement 
seems to be that through acquaintance with ancient myths in childhood 
the pupil becomes somewhat familiar with one phase of the life of the 
ancient peoples — the aesthetic and religious— and so is better prepared 
to understand their institutional life later, when he has attained the 
age of reason. 



5i6 Rejwrt of Committee of Fifteen. 

the king. They neglected all the other institutions — family, 
productive industry, and state — for the sake of one, the Church, 
and even that not the established ceremonial of the people, 
but a higher and more direct communing with Jehovah. So 
with artists and men of letters it is more or less the case that 
the institutional side of their lives is neglected, or unsymmet- 
rical, or if this is not the case it will be found prosaic and 
uneventful, throwing no light on their matchless produc- 
tions. 

For these reasons should not the present use of literary 
biography as it exists in secondary schools, and is gradually 
making its way into elementary schools, be discouraged, and 
the time now given to it devoted to the study of literary works 
of art? It will be admitted that the exposure of the foibles 
of artists has an immoral tendency on youth: for example, 
one effects to be a poet, and justifies laxity and self-indulgence 
through the example of Byron. Those who support this view 
holdothat we should not dignify the immoral and defective 
side f life by making it a branch of study in school.^' 

Correlation by synthesis of studies. 

Your Committee would mention another sense in which the 
expression correlation of studies is sometimes used. It is held 
by advocates of an artificial center of the course of study. 
They use, for example, De Foe's Robinson Crusoe for a reading 
exercise, and connect with it the lessons in geography and 
arithmetic. It has been pointed out by critics of this method 
that there is always danger of covering up the literary features 
of the reading matter under accessories of mathematics and 
natural science. If the material for other branches is to be 
sought for in connection with the literary exercise, it will dis- 
tract the attention from the poetic unity. On the other hand, 
arithmetic and geography cannot be unfolded freely and com- 
prehensively if they are to wait on the opportunities afforded 
in a poem or a novel for their development. A correlation of 

^^This argument against the serious study of the biographies of 
authors in connection with the study of their works, is both unique 
and forcible. They are not to be studied because they are not worth 
knowing at that stage of the pupil's growth. 



Correlation of /Studies. 57 

this kind, instead of being a deeper correlation such as is found 
in all parts of human learning by the studies of the college and 
university, is rather a shallow and uninteresting kind of corre- 
lation that reminds one of the system of mnemonics, or arti- 
ficial memory, which neglects the association of facts and events 
with their causes and the history of their evolution, and looks 
for unessential quips, puns, or accidental suggestions with a 
view to strengthening the memory. The effect of this is to 
weaken the power of systematic thinking which deals with 
essential relations, and substitute for it a chaotic memory 
that ties together things through false and seeming relations, 
not of the things and events, but of the words that denote 
them. 

The correlation of geography and arithmetic and history 
in and through the unity of a work of fiction is at best an 
artificial correlation, which will stand in the way of the true 
objective correlations. It is a temporary scaffolding made for 
school purposes. Instruction should avoid such temporary 
structures as much as possible, and when used they should be 
only used for the day, and not for the year, because of the 
danger of building up an apperceptive center in the child's 
mind that will not harmonize with the true apperceptive center 
required by the civilization. The story of Robinson Crusoe 
has intense interest to the child as a lesson in sociology, show- 
ing him the helplessness of isolated man and the re-enforce- 
ment that comes to him through society. It shows the impor- 
tance of the division of labor. All children should read this 
book in the later years of the elementary course, and a few 
profitable discussions may be had in school regarding its sig- 
nificence. But De Foe painted in it only the side of adventure 
that be found in his countrymen in his epoch, England after 
the defeat of the Armada having taken up a career of con- 
quest on the seas, ending by colonization and a world com- 
merce. The liking for adventure continues to this day among 
all Anglo-Saxon peoples, and beyond other nationalities there 
is in English-speaking populations a delight in building up 
civilization from the very foundation. This is only, however, 
one phase of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Consequently the his- 
tory of Crusoe is not a proper center for a year's study in 
school. It omits cities, governments, the world commerce, 



58 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

the international process, the Church,* the newspaper and book 
from view, and they are not even reflected in it. 

Your Committee would call attention in this connection to 
the importance of the pedagogical principle of analysis and isola- 
tion as preceding synthesis and correlation. There should be 
rigid isolation of the elements of each branch for the purpose of 
gettingaclear conception of what is individual and peculiar in a 
special province of learning. Otherwise one will not gain from 
each its special contribution to the whole. That there is some 
danger from the kind of correlation that essays to teach all 
branches in each will be apparent from this point of view.^* 

III. THE SCHOOL PROGRAM. 

In order to find a place in the elementary school for the 
several branches recommended in this report, it will be nec- 
essary to use economically the time allotted for the school 

^^This section of the report has been thought to assail the principle 
of concentration which is emphasized so strongly by the Herbartians. 
It is reported that such an artificial center as Robinson Crusoe has been 
advocated by some German pedagogues who call themselves Herbar- 
tians, but was not advocated by Herbart himself. No such doctrine is 
taught by any Herbartian in this country who has ability enough to 
gain a hearing and a following. But there is one serious attempt in 
this country to teach all the common school branches, or a large num- 
ber of them, with nature ^tudy as the core. The Herbartians choose 
language, literature, and history as the central studies. It is their doc- 
trine that each branch is to be mastered as a distinct group of ideas, 
but their contention is that the differences between the studies is too 
often emphasized to the exclusion of their unity. In much of our 
school practice parts of a subject, as arithmetic, or geography, are so 
separated from other parts of the same study that the pupils fail to see 
them as parts of one whole. The school studies may be classified not only 
into groups of kindred studies as the mathematics, the natural sciences, 
and the like, but some of these groups have a closer kinship than have 
others; such as language, literature, and history for example. This kin- 
ship can be recognized in the interest of an organized unity of knowledge 
even in the lower grades. But the Herbartians should not be forced, even 
by the misrepresentation of the critics, to go to the other extreme from 
that which now prevails so generally, and teach either in theory or 
practice, that a thorough mastery of each study as a distinct body of 
knowledge and a distinct discipline is not to be insisted upon. The 
contention is that arithmetic can be better mastered as arithmetic In 
the elementary grades when it is seen in its concrete relations to life; 
that is, to the other subjects of study in the school. 



Correlation of ^Studies, 59 

term, which is about two hundred days, exclusive of vacations 
and holidays. Five days per week and five hours of actual 
school work or a little less per day, after excluding recesses for 
recreation, give about twenty-five hours per week. There 
should be, as far as possible, alternation of study-hours and 
recitations (the word recitation being used in the United 
States for class exercise or lesson conducted by the teacher 
and requiring the critical attention of the entire class.) Those 
studies requiring the clearest thought should be taken up, as a 
usual thing, in the morning session, say arithmetic the second 
half hour of the morning and grammar the half-hour next 
succeeding the morning recess for recreation in the open air. 
By some who are anxious to prevent study at home, or at least 
to control its amount, it is thought advisable to place the 
arithmetic lesson after the grammar lesson, so that the study 
learned at home will be grammar instead of arithmetic. It is 
found by experience that if mathematical problems are taken 
home for solution two bad habits arise, namely, in one case, the 
pupil gets assistance from his parents or others, and thereby 
loses to some extent his own power of overcoming difficulties 
by brave and persistent attacks unaided by others; the other 
evil is a habit of consuming long hours in the preperation of a 
lesson that should be prepared in thirty minutes, if all the 
powers of mind are fresh and at command. An average child 
may spend three hours in the preparation of an arithmetic 
lesson. Indeed, in repeated efforts to solve one of the so- 
called "conundrums," a whole family may spend the entire 
evening. One of the unpleasant results of the next day is 
that the teacher who conducts the lesson never knows the 
exact capacity and rate of progress of his pupils; in the 
recitation he probes the knowledge and preparation of the 
pupil, plus an unknown amount of preparatory work borrow- 
ed from parents and others. He even increases the length of 
the lessons, and requires more work at home, when the amount 
already exceeds the unaided capacity of the pupil. 

The lessons should be arranged so as to bring in such exer- 
cises as furnish relief from intellectual tension between others 
that make large demands on the thinking powers. Such exer- 
cises as singing and calisthenics, writing and drawing, also 
reading, are of the nature of a relief from those recitations 



60 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

that tax the memory, critical alertnesS, and introspection, like 
arithmetic, grammar, and history. 

Your Committee has not been able to agree on the question 
whether pupils who leave school early should have a course of 
study different from the course of those who are to continue 
on into secondary and higher work. It is contended, on the 
one hand, that those who leave early should have a more prac- 
tical course, and that they should dispense with those studies 
that seem to be in the nature of preparatory work for sec- 
ondary and higher education. Such studies as algebra and 
Latin, for example, should not be taken up unless the pupil 
expects to pursue the same for a sufficient time to complete 
the secondary course. It is replied on the other hand, that it 
is best to have one course for all, because any school education 
is at best but an initiation for the pupil into the art of learn- 
ing, and that wherever he leaves off in his school course he 
should continue, by the aid of the public library and home 
study, in the work of mastering science and literature. It is 
further contended that a brief course in higher studies, like 
Latin and algebra, instead of being useless, is of more value 
than any elementary studies that might replace them. The 
first ten lessons in algebra give the pupil the fundamental idea 
of the general expression of arithmetical solutions by means 
of letters and other symbols. Six months study of it gives 
him the power to use the method in stating the manifold con- 
ditions of a problem in partnership, or in ascertaining a value 
that depends on several transformations of the data given. It 
is claimed, indeed, that the first few lessons in any branch are 
relatively of more educational value than an equal number of 
subsequent lessons, because the fundamental ideas and princi- 
ples of the new study are placed at the beginning. In Latin, 
for instance, the pupil learns in his first week's study the to 
him strange phenomenon of a language that performs by 
inflections what his own language performs by the use of prep- 
ositions and auxiliaries. He is still more surprised to find that 
the order of words in a sentence is altogether different in Ro- 
man usage from that to which he is accustomed. He further 
begins to recognize in the Latin words many roots or stems 
which are employed to denote immediate sensuous objects, 
while they have been adopted into his English tongue to 



Correlation of Studies, 61 

signify fine shades of distinction in thought or feeling. By 
these three things his powers of observation in matters of lan- 
guage are armed, as it were, with new faculties. Nothing 
that he has hitherto learned in grammar is so radical and 
far reaching as what he learns of his first week's study of Latin. 
The Latin arrangement of words in a sentence indicates a dif- 
ferent order of mental arrangement in the process of appre- 
hension and expression of thought. This arrangement is 
rendered possible by declensions. This amounts to attaching 
prepositions to the ends of the words, which they thus convert 
into adjectival or adverbial modifiers; whereas the separate 
prepositions of the English must indicate by their position in 
the sentence their grammatical relation. These observations, 
and the new insight into the etymology of P^nglish words hav- 
ing a Latin derivation, are of the nature of mental seeds which 
will grow and bear fruit throughout life in the better com- 
mand of one's native tongue. All this will come from a very 
brief time devoted to Latin in school. 



Amount of time for each branch. 

Your Committee recommends that an hour of sixty min- 
utes each week be assigned in the program for each of the 
following subjects throughout the eight years: Physical 
culture, vocal music, oral lessons in natural science (hygiene 
to be included among the topics under this head), oral lessons 
in biography and general history, and that the same amount 
of time each week shall be devoted to drawing from the second 
year to the eighth inclusive; to manual training during the 
seventh and eighth years so as to include sewing and cookery 
for the girls, and work in wood and iron for the boys. 

Your Committee recommends that reading be given at 
least one lesson each day for the entire eight years, it being 
understood, however, that there shall be two or more lessons 
each day in reading in the first and second years, in which the 
recitation is necessarily very short, because of the inability of 
the pupil to give continued close attention, and because he 
has little power of applying himself to the work of preparing 
lessons by himself. In the first three years the reading should 



62 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

be limited to pieces in the colloquial style, but selections from 
the classics of the language in prose and in poetry shall be 
read to the pupil from time to time, and discussions made of 
such features of the selections read as may interest the pupils. 
After the third year, your Committee believes that the reading 
lesson should be given to selections from classic authors of 
English, and that the work of the recitation should be divided 
between {a) the elocution, {b) the grammatical peculiarities of 
the language, including spelling, definitions, syntactical con- 
struction, punctuation, and figures of prosody, and (c) the 
literary contents, including the main and accessory ideas, the 
emotions painted, the deeds described, the devices of style to 
produce a strong impression on the reader. Your Committee 
wishes to lay emphasis on the importance of the last item — 
that of literary study — which should consume more and more 
of the time of the recitation from grade to grade in the period 
from the fourth to the eighth year. In the fourth year and 
previously the first item — that of elocution, to secure distinct 
enunciation and correct pronunciation — should be most prom- 
inent. In the fifth and sixth years the second item — that of 
spelling, defining, and punctuation — should predominate 
slightly over the other two items. In the yeais from the fifth 
to the eig^hth there should be some reading of entire stories, 
such as G-ulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Rip Van Winkle, 
The Lady of the Lake, Hiawatha, and similar stories adapted 
in style and subject-matter to the capacity of the pupils. An 
hour should be devoted each week to conversations on the 
salient points of the story, its literary and ethical bearings. ^^ 

^^It seems pretty evident that this report regards the text-book in 
reading as the chief source of material for the study of literature in 
elementary grades. There is a phase of literature study that is ana- 
lytic and another in which synthesis is the leading movement. For 
the former the suggestions in this report are worthy of universal ap- 
proval. The selections in Appleton's Fourth Reader indicate the grade 
of literature that the author has in mind. The writer has known a 
thoughtful teacher to spend six weeks in the study of "The Bare-foot 
Boy." The author of this report would not approve of that, to be sure, 
but one can gain from the outlines of study appended to the selections 
in Appleton's Fourth and Fifth readers the sort of study he has in 
view. There is a large class of very thoughtful teachers who do not 
find in this sort of study all or nearly all that the school should do to 
cultivate a taste for good reading. But they generally stand firm in 



Correlation of Studies. 63 

Your Committee agrees in the opinion that in teaching 
language care should be taken that the pupil practices much 
in writing exercises and original compositions. At first the 
pupil will use only his colloquial vocabulary, but as he gains 
command of the technical vocabularies of geography, arithme- 
tic, and history, and learns the higher literary vocabulary of 
his language, he will extend his use of words accordingly. 
Daily from the first year the child will prepare some lesson or 
portion of a lesson in writing. Your Committee has included 
under the head of oral grammar (from the first to the middle 
of the fifth year) one phase of this written work devoted to the 
study of the literary form and the technicalities of composition 
in such exercises as letter writing, written reviews of the 
several branches studied, reports of the oral lessons in natural 
science and history, paraphrases of the poems and prose liter- 
ature of the readers, and finally compositions or written essays 
on suitable themes assigned by the teacher, but selected from 
the fields of knowledge studied in school. Care should be 
taken to criticise all paraphrases of poetry in respect to the 
good or bad taste shown in the choice of words; parodies 
should never be permitted.^'' 

It is thought by your Committee that the old style of 

the conviction that the reader should have the most prominent place 
as material for use in teaching the children language and literature. 
The pupil must learn how to study masterpieces by an analytic 
method in which the isolation of parts prepares for their final unity. 
But too much of this analysis has the general effect of the grammatical 
analysis and parsing of "The Lady of the Lake." There should be an 
equal amount of study of literature in which synthesis is the leading 
process. Here the mastery of the content is the leading purpose and 
the study of the form is incidental. It is but slowly that a child grows 
into an appreciation of the form in literary masterpieces. But the 
ethical and thought content they can master sooner and it is by way of 
the mastery of these that they eventually come into an appreciation of 
the beauty of form. The reader is in the schools for all time. It is 
equally important that other literary masterpieces, and in the lower 
grades, juvenile literature, be read with only so much analytic study 
as will make sure of the meaning and leave the beauty of form to pro- 
duce what effect it may. 

^^In interpreting this paragraph the reader must be careful to dis- 
tinguish between 'paraphrase and parody. The latter is never to be en- 
couraged. The former is of doubtful value except when employed for 
the purpose named in the report. 



64 Report of Committee of Fifteen, 

<;omposition writing was too formal. It was kept too far away 
from the other work of the pupil. Instead of giving a written 
account of what he had learned in arithmetic, geography, 
grammar, history, and natural science, the pupil attempted 
artificial descriptions and reflections on such subjects as 
"Spring," "Happiness," "Perseverence, " "Friendship," or 
something else outside of the line of his school studies. 

Your Committee has already expressed its opinion that 
a good English style is not to be acquired by the study of 
grammar so much as by familiarity with great masterpieces 
of literature. We especially recommend that pupils who 
have taken up the fourth and fifth readers, containing the 
selections from great authors, should often be required to 
make written paraphrases of prose or poetic models of style, 
using their own vocabulary to express the thoughts so far as 
possible, and borrowing the recherche words and phrases of 
the author, where their own resources fail them. In this way 
the pupil learns to see what the great author has done to en- 
rich the language and to furnish adequate means of expression 
for what could not be presented in words before, or at least 
not in so happy a manner. 

Your Committee believes that every recitation is, in one 
aspect of it, an attempt to express the thoughts and informa- 
tion of the lesson in the pupil's own words, and thus an initial 
exercise in composition. The regular weekly written review 
of the important topics in the several branches studied is a 
more elaborate exercise in composition, the pupil endeavoring 
to collect what he knows and to state it systematically and 
in proper language. The punctuation, spelling, syntax, pen- 
manship, choice of words, and style should not, it is true, be 
made a matter of criticism in connection with the other lessons, 
but only in the language lesson proper. But the pupil will learn 
language, all the same, by the written and oral recitations. The 
oral grammar lessons from the first year to the middle of the 
fifth year, should deal chiefly with the use of language, gradually 
introducing the grammatical technique as it is needed to describe 
accurately the correct forms and the usages violated. 

Your Committee believes that there is some danger of wast- 
ing the time of the pupil in these oral and written language 
lessons in the first four years by confining the work of the 



Correlation of Studies. 65 

pupil to the expression of ordinary commonplace ideas not 
related to the subjects of his other lessons, especially when the 
expression is confined to the colloquial vocabulary. Such 
training has been severely and justly condemned as teaching 
what is called prating or gabbling, rather than a noble use of 
English speech. It is clear that the pupil should have a digni- 
fied and worthy subject of composition, and what is so good 
for his purpose as the themes he has tried to master in his 
regular lessons ? The reading lessons will give matter for 
literary style, the geography for scientific style, and the arith- 
metic for a business style; for all styles should be learned. 

Your Committee recommends that selected lists of words 
difficult to spell be made from the reading lessons and mastered 
by frequent writing and oral spelling during the fourth, fifth, 
and sixth years. 

Your Committee recommends that the use of a text-book in 
grammar begin with the second half of the fifth year, and con- 
tinue until the beginning of the study of Latin in the eighth 
grade, and that one daily lesson of twenty-five or thirty min- 
utes be devoted to it.* 

For Latin we recommend one daily lesson of thirty minutes 
for the eighth year. For arithmetic we recommend number 
work from the first year to the eighth, one lesson each day, but 
the use of the text-book in number should not, in our opinion, 
begin until the first quarter of the third year. We recommend 
that the applications of elementary algebra to arithmetic, as 
hereinbefore explained, be substituted for pure arithmetic in 
the seventh and eighth years, a daily lesson being given. 

Your committee recommends that penmanship as a separate 
branch be taught in the first six years at least three lessons per 
week. ^" 

Geography, in the opinion of your Committee, should begin 
with oral lessons in the second year, and with a text-book in the 

^^There is too much time wasted on teaching penmanship in our 
graded schools. This recommendation that penmanship as a separate 
branch cease with the sixth grade ought to be adopted. The writer re- 
cently visited an eighth grade taught by the principal of a large build- 
ing in one of the prominent smaller cities of the central states. He was 
a good teacher of long experience and taught penmanship by the ap- 
proved methods, using a good deal of practice paper, the pupils putting 

* See comment on a preceding page. 



66 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

third quarter of the third year, and be continued to the close of 
the sixth year with one lesson each day, and in the seventh and 
eighth years with three lessons per week.* 

History of the United States with the use of a text-book, 
your Committee recommends for the seventh and the first half 
of the eighth year, one lesson each day; the Constitution of 
the United States for the third quarter of the eighth year. 

The following schedule will show the number of lessons per 
week for each quarter of each year: 

Reading. Eight years, with daily lessons. 

Penmanship. Six years, ten lessons per week for first two years, five 
for third and fourth, and three for fifth and sixth. 

Spelling Lists. Fourth, fifth, and sixth years, four lessons per week. 

Grammar. Oral, with composition or dictation, first year to middle of 
fifth year, text-book from middle of fifth year to close of seventh 
year, five lessons per week. (Composition writing should be included 
under this head. But the written examinations on the several 
branches should be counted under the head of composition work.) 

Latin or French or German. Eighth year, five lessons per week. 

Arithmetic. Oral first and second year, text-book third to sixth year, 
five lessons per week. 

Algebra. Seventh and eighth year, five lessons per week. 

Geography. Oral lessons second year to middle of third year, text- 
book from middle of third year, five lessons weekly to seventh year, 
and three lessons to close of eighth. 

Natural Science and Hygien*^. Sixty minutes per week, eight years. 

History of United States. Five hours per week seventh year and first 
half of eighth year. 

Constitution of United States. Third quarter in the eighth year. 

General History and Biography. Oral lessons, sixty minutes a week, 
eight years. 

Physical Culture. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Vocal Music. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Drawing. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Manual Training, Sewing, and Cooking. One-half day each week in 
seventh and eighth years. 

their best efforts on the copy-book — a few lines at each lesson. The 
school had been doing this for eight months and had that day finished 
the copy-books. On inspection of the books its was discovered that' in 
three cases in four, and, probably in five cases in six, the first page 
written last September was distinctly better in every respect than the 
last pasres written in the following May. Sixty hours or twelve solid 
days of the school time of the year had been worse than wasted. 
The pupils all wrote well enough in September. It is quite probable 
that they wrote well enough when they finished the sixth grade. Let 
this excellence be maintained in the written exercises of the school and 
use the writing hour for something else. 



Correlation of Studies. 67 

.Your Committee recommends recitations of fifteen minutes 
in length in the first and second years, of twenty minutes in 
length in the third and fourth years, of twenty-five minutes in 
the fifth and sixth years, and of thirty minutes in the seventh 
and eighth. 

The results of this program show for the first and second 
years twenty lessons a week of fifteen minutes each, besides 
seven other exercises occupying an average of twelve minutes 
apiece each day; the total amount of time occupied in the con- 
tinuous attention of the recitation or class exercises being 
twelve hours, or an average of two hours and twenty-four min- 
utes per day. 

For the third year twenty lessons a week of twenty min- 
utes each, and five general exercises taking up five hours a 
week or an average of one hour per day, giving an average 
time per day of two hours and twenty minutes for class recita- 
tions or exercises. 

In the fourth the recitations increase to twenty-four (by 
reason of four extra lessons in spelling) and the time occupied 
in recitations and exercises to thirteen hours and an average 
per day of two hours and thirty-six minutes. 



68 



Report of Committee of Fifteen. 



Branches. 


ut year 


•2d year 


3d year 


Uh ye'r 


5th ye'r 


6'/^ ye'r 


7th ye'r 


Sth ye'r 




10 lessons a w'k 


lessons a week 






V.ritiag 


10 lessons a w'k 


5 lessons a week 3 lessons a week 




Spelling Lists... 






4 lessons a week 






English Oral, with composition lessons 
Grammar 


5 lessons a week with 
text-book 


Latin 
















5 les'ns 








Arithmetic 


Oral, eo min- 
utes a week 


5 lessons a week with text-book 






Algebra 




1 








5 lessons a week 






Geography 


Oral, 60 min'ts a week *5 lessons a week with text- 
book 


3 lessons a week 


Natural Science 
-f Hygiene 


Sixty minutes a week 


U. S. History. . . . 














5 lessons a 
week 




U. S. Constitut'n 








1 








*5 

les. 



General History. 



Oral, sixty minutes a week 



Physical 



Culture 



Sixty minutes a week 



Vocal Music. 



Sixty minutes a week divided into four lessons 



Drawiug. 



Manual Train. 

or Sewing— 

Cookerv 



Sixty minutes a week 



One-half day ea. 



No. of Lessons.. 


30-T 
daily 
exer. 


20-7 
daily 
exer. 


20-5 

ally 

exer. 


34-5 

daily 
exer. 


27 -f 5 
daily 
exer. 


27^5 1 23-6 
daily | daily 
exer. | exer. 


23-6 
daily 
exer. 


Total Hours of 
Recitations 


13 


18 


lis 


13 


16^^ 


16^4 


174 


174 


"^^"iSiSus"^"' 1^™-- 


15 min. 


20 min. 


30 min. 


25 min 


25 min. 


30 min. 


30 min. 



^Begins in second half year 



Correlation of Studies. 69 

In the fifth and sixth years the number of recitations in- 
creases to twenty-seven per week, owing to the addition of 
formal grammar, and the total number of hours required for 
all is 16J; per week, or an average of 3^ per day. 

In the seventh and eighth years the number of lessson 
decreases to twenty-three, history being added, penmanship 
and special lessons in spelling discontinued, the time devoted 
to geography reduced to three lessons a week. But the reci- 
tation is increased to thirty minutes in length. Manual train- 
ing occupies a half day, or 2^ hours, each week. The total is 
19 hours per week or 3f per day. 

The foregoing tabular exhibit shows all of these par- 
ticulars. 

IV. METHODS AND ORGANIZATION. 

Your Committee is agreed that the time devoted to the 
elementary school work should not be reduced from eight 
years, but they have reccommended, as hereinbefore stated, 
that in the seventh and eighth years a modified form of algebra 
be introduced in place of advanced arithmetic, and that in the 
eighth year English grammar yield place to Latin. This 
makes, in their opinion, a proper transition to the studies of 
the secondary school and is calculated to assist the pupil 
materially in his preparation for that work. Hitherto, the 
change from the work of the elementary school has been too 
abrupt, the pupil beginning three formal studies at once, 
namely algebra, physical geography, and Latin. 

Your Committee has found it necessary to discuss the ques- 
tion of methods of teaching in numerous instances, while con- 
sidering the question of educational values and programs, 
because the value and time of beginning of the several branches 
depends so largely on the method of teaching. 

The following recommendations, however, remain for this 
part of their report: 

They would recommend that the specialization of teacher's 
work should not be attempted before the seventh or eighth 
year of the elementary school and in not more than one or two 
studies then. In the secondary school it is expected that a 
teacher will teach one or at most two branches. In the ele- 



70 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

men tary school, for at least six years, it is better, on the whole, 
to have each teacher instruct his pupils in all the branches that 
they study, for the reason that only in this way can he hold an 
even pressure on the requirements of work, correlating it in 
such a manner that no one study absorbs undue attention. 
In this way the pupils prepare all their lessons under the 
direct supervision of the same teacher, and by their recitations 
show what defects of methods of study there have been in the 
preparation. 

The ethical training is much more successful under this 
plan, because the personal influence of a teacher is much 
greater when he or she knows minutely the entire scope of the 
school work. In the case of the special teacher the responsi- 
bility is divided and the opportunities of special acquaintance 
with character and habits diminished. ^^ 

With one teacher who supervises the study and hears all 
the recitations, there is a much better opportunity to cultivate 
the two kinds of attention. The teacher divides his pupils 
into two cUsses and hears one recite while the other class pre- 
pares for the next lesson. The pupils reciting are required to 
pay strict attention to the one of their number who is explain- 
ing the point assigned him by the teacher — they are to be on 
the alert to notice any mistakes of statement or omissions of 
important data, they are at the same time to pay close atten- 
tion to the remarks of the teacher. This is one kind of 
attention which may be called associated critical attention. 
The pupils engaged in the preparation of the next lesson are 
busy, each one by himself, studying the book and mastering 
its facts and ideas, and comparing them one with another, and 
making the effort to become oblivious of their fellow-pupils, the 
recitation going on, and the teacher. This is another kind of 
attention, which is not associated, but an individual effort to 
master for one's self without aid a prescribed task and to resist 
all distracting influences. These two disciplines in attention 
are the best formal training that the school affords. 39 

^^This is a brief but very satisfactory disposition of the question of 
specialization in teaching in the elementary schools. It is not best for 
either teacher or pupils that specialization shall prevail below the high 
school. 

^^This paragraph disposes of the craze for that "individualism" in 
teaching which discards class exercises. The distinction between indi- 



Correlation of Studies. 71 

Your committee has already mentioned a species of faulty 
correlation wherein the attempt is made to study all branches 
in each, misapplying Jacotot's maxim, "all is in all" {tout est 
dans tout). 

A frequent error of this kind is the practice of making 
every recitation a language lesson, and interrupting the arith- 
metic, geography, history, literature, or whatever it may be, 
by calling the pupil's attention abruptly to something in his 
forms of expression, his pronunciation, or to some faulty use of 
English; thus turning the entire system of school work into a 
series of grammar exercises and weakening the power of con- 
tinuous thought on the objective contents of the several 
branches, by creating a pernicious habit of self-consciousness 
in the matter of verbal expression. While your Committee 
would not venture to say that there should not be some degree 
of attention to the verbal expression in all lessons, it is of the 
opinion that it should be limited to criticism of the recitation 
for its want of technical accuracy. The technical words in 
each branch should be discussed until the pupil is familiar with 
their full force. The faulty English should be criticised as 
showing confusion of thought or memory, and should be cor- 
rected in this sense. But solecisms of speech should be silently 
noted by the teacher for discussion in the regular language 
lesson. *° 

The question of promotion of pupils has occupied from time 
to time very much attention. Your Commitlee believes that in 
many systems of elementary schools, there is injury done by 
too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a 

vidualistic attention and associated attention is here well set forth. 
Individualism in teaching seems to rest upon the false theory that a 
person as individual has nothing in common with his fellows. On the 
contrary, what he has in common with others is the largest and best 
part of him as individual. The individual is the "undivided" self, and 
the self is both universal and particular; both many and one; both man 
and a man. 

^"No more important suggestion as to method of teaching has been 
made in this report. The divided attention of the pupil between the 
thing to be said and the manner of saying it, when the pupil is called 
upon to do his best thinking, is one of the worst evils in many good 
schools. When the pupil is merely reciting what he has already in 
mind he can be held to strict responsibilty for the form in which he ex- 
presses it. 



72 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

given class have completed the work tip to a given arbitrarily 
fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment 
of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when 
the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought 
necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years 
of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain 
how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or 
year's work. All that failed at this examination were set back 
at the beginning of the year's work to spend another year in 
reviewing it. This was to meet the convenience of the super- 
intendent who, it was said, could not hold examinations to suit 
the wants of individuals or particular classes. From this ar- 
rangement there naturally resulted a great deal of what is called 
' 'marking time. " Pupils who had nearly completed the work of 
the year were placed with pupils who had been till now a year's 
interval below them. Discouragement and demoralization at 
the thought of taking up again a course of lessons learned 
once before caused many pupils to leave school permaturely. 

This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of the cities 
by promoting pupils whenever they have completed the work 
of a grade. The constant tendency of classification to become 
imperfect by reason of the difference in rates of advancement 
of the several pupils, owing to disparity in ages, degree of 
maturity, temperament, and health, makes frequent reclassifi- 
cation necessary. _ This is easily accomplished by promoting 
the few pupils who distance the majority of their classmates 
into the next class above, separated as it is or ought to be, by 
an interval of less than half a year. The bright pupils thus 
promoted have to struggle to make up the ground covered in 
the interval between the two classes, but they are nearly 
always able to accomplish this, and generally will in two year's 
time need another pro.i otion from class to class. 

The Procrustean character of the old city systems has 
been removed by this device. 

There remain for mention some other evils besides bad 
systems of promotion due to defects of organization. The 
school buildings are often with superstitious care kept apart 
exclusively for particular grades of pupils. The central build- 
ing erected for high school purposes, though only half filled, 
is not made to relieve the neighboring grammar school, 



Correlation of Studies. 73 

crowded to such a degree that it cannot receive the classes 
which ought to be promoted from the primary schools. It 
has happened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so 
far that the pupils in the primary school building were kept at 
work on studies already finished, because they could not be 
transferred to the grammar school. 

In all good school systems the pupils take up new work 
when they have completed the old, and the bright pupils are 
transferred to higher classes when they have so far distanced 
their fellows that the amount of work fixed for the average 
ability of the class does not give them enough to do. 

In conclusion your Committee would state, by way of ex- 
planation, that it has been led into many digressions, in illus- 
trating the details of its recommendations in this report, 
through its desire to make clear the grounds on which it has 
based its conclusions and through the hope that such de- 
tails will call out a still more thorough-going discussion of the 
educational values of branches proposed for elementary schools, 
and of the methods by which those branches may be success- 
fully taught. 

With a view to increase the interest in this subject your 
Committee recommends the publication of selected passages 
from the papers sent in by invited auxiliary committees and 
by volunteers, many of these containing valuable suggestions 
not mentioned in this report. ^^ 

William T. Harris, Chairman, 
United States Commissioner of Education, Washington, D.C. 



I dissent from the majority report of the Committee in 
regard to the following points: 

Arithmetic. 

1. As to fractions : In teaching arithmetic there does not 
exist any greater difficulty in getting small children to grasp 

■^^It is an interesting fact that the chairman is the only member of 
the committee who signed this report without dissenting from some of 
its doctrines. It will be observed that the non-concurrence of the other 
members of the committee is not in the estimate made of the educational 
values of the studies so much as in the method suggested for realizing 
these values in the school. 



74 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

the nature of the fraction as such tlian in getting them to 
grasp the idea of the simpler whole numbers. It is true that 
the fractions ^, ^, ^, etc., as symbols, are a little more complex 
than are the single digits; but as to the real meaning, when 
once the fractional idea has been properly developed by the 
teacher and the significance of the idea apprehended by the 
pupil, it is as easily understood as any other simple truth. 
Children get the idea of half^ third, or quarter of many things 
long before they enter school, and they will as readily learn to 
add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions as they will whole 
numbers. In using fractions they will draw diagrams and pic- 
tures representing the processes of work as quickly and easily 
as they illustrate similar work with integers. It is of course 
assumed that the teacher knows how to teach arithmetic to 
children, or rather, how to teach the children how to teach 
themselves. There is really no valid argument why children 
in the second, third, and fourth years in school should not 
master the fundamental operations in fractions. Not only this, 
they will put the more common fractions into the technique of 
•percentage, and do this as well in the second and third grades 
as at any other time in their future progress. There is only 
one new idea involved in this operation, and that consists in 
giving an additional term — per cent — to the fractional symbol. 
When one number is a part of another, it may be regarded as 
a fractional part or as such a per cent of it. A great deal of 
percentage is thus learned by the pupils early in the course. 
Children are not hurt by learning. Standing still and lost 
motion kill. 

Every recitation should reach the full swing of the learner's 
mind, including all his acquisitions on any given topic. But 
if the teaching of fractions be deferred, as it usually is inmost 
schools, the time may be materially shortened by teaching 
addition and subtraction of fractions together. This is simple 
enough if different fractions having common denominators are 
used at first, such as | + f = ?, and f — f = ? Then the next 
step, after sufficient drill on this case, is to take two fractions 
(simple) of different units of value, as t + i = ?, and 
^— ^=? Multiplication and division may be treated similarly. 

In decimals, the pupil is really confronted by a simpler 
form of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions. 



Correlation of /Studies. 75 

Devices and illustrations of a material kind are necessary 
to build up in the pupil's mind at the beginning a clear concept 
of a tenth, etc., etc., and then to show that one-tenth written 
as a decimal is only a short handway of writing iV as a com- 
mon fraction, and so on. He sees very soon that the deci- 
mal is only a shorthand common fraction, and this notion 
he must hold to. This is the vital point in decimals. The 
idea that they can be changed into common fractions and 
the reverse at will, establishes the fact in the pupil's mmd 
that they are common fractions and not uncommon ones. 
Fixing the decimal point will, in a short time, take care of 
itself. 

In teaching arithmetic the steps are: (1) developing the 
subject till each pupil gets a clear conception of it; (2) 
necessary drill to fix the process; (3) connecting the sub- 
ject with all that has preceded it; (4) its applications; (5) 
the pupils ability to sum up clearly and concisely what he 
has learned.* 

2. As to abridgment: Under this head, I hold that a course 
in arithmetic, including simple numbers, fractions, tables of 
weights and measures, percentage and interest, and numerical 
operations in powers, does not fit a pupil to begin the study of 
algebra. That while he may carry the book under his arm to 
the schoolroom, he is too poorly equipped to make headway 
on this subject, and instead of finishing up algebra in a reason- 
able length of time he is kept too long at it, with a strong 
probability of his becoming disgusted with it. 

There are subjects, however, in the common school arith- 
metic that may be dropped out to great advantage, to-wit, 
all but the simplest exercises in compound interest, foreign 
exchange, all foreign moneys (except reference tables of 
values,) annuities, alligation, progression; and the entire sub- 
jects of percentage and interest should be condensed into 
about twenty pages. 

Cancellation, factoring, proportion, evolution, and involu- 
tion should be retained. Cancellation and factoring should be 
strongly emphasized owing to their immense value in 
shortening work in arithmetic, algebra, and in more ad- 

* See comment on a preceding page. 



76 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

vanced subjects. Some drill in the Metric System should not 
be omitted. 

3. As to mental arithmetic: Till the end of the fourth year 
the pupil does not need a text-book of mental arithmetic. So 
far his work in arithmetic should be about equally divided 
between written and mental. At the beginning of the fifth 
year, in adition to his written arithmetic, he should begin a 
mental arithmetic and continue it three years, reciting at least 
four mental arithmetic lessons each week. The length of the 
recitation should he twenty minutes. A pupil well drilled in 
mental arithmetic at the end of the seventh year, if the school 
age begins at six, is far better prepared to study algebra than 
the one who has not had such a drill. There are a few problems 
in arithmetic that can be solved more easily by algebra than by 
the ordinary processes of arithmetic, but there are many num- 
erical problems in equations of the first degree that can be more 
easily handled by mental arithmetic than by algebra. To attack 
arithmetical problems by algebra is very much like using a 
tremendous lever to lift a feather. Those who have found a 
great stumbling-block in arithmetical "conundrums," have, if 
the inside facts were known, been looking in the wrong direc- 
tion. A deficiency of "number-brain-cells" will afford an 
adequate explanation. 

4. Rearrangement of subjects: There should be a rearrang- 
ing of the topics in arithmetic so that one subject naturally 
leads up to the next. As an illustration, it is easily seen that 
whole numbers and fractions can be treated together, and 
that with United States money, when the dime is reached is the 
proper time to begin decimals, and that when "a square" in 
surface measure first comes up, the next step is the s^'ware of a 
number as well as its square root, and that solid measure logic- 
ally lands the learner among cubes and cube-roots. When he 
learns that 1728 cubic inches make one cubic foot he is pre- 
pared to find the edge of the cube. What is meant here is 
pointing the way to the next above. All depends upon the 
teacher's ability to lead the pupil to see conditions and rela- 
tions. My contention is that truth, so far as one is capable of 
taking hold of it when it is properly presented, is always a 
simple affair. 



Correlation of Studies. 77 

5. As to algebra: If algebra be commenced at the middle of 
the seventh year, let the pupil go at it in earnest, and keep at 
it till he has mastered it. Here the best opportunities will be 
afforded him to connect his algebraic knowlege to his arith- 
metical knowledge. He builds the one on top of the other. 
The skillful teacher always insists that the learner shall estab- 
lish and maintain this relationship between the two subjects. 
To switch around the other way appears to me to be the same 
as to omit certain exercises in the common algebra, because 
they are more briefly and elegantly treated in the calculus. It 
is admitted that a higher branch of mathematics often throws 
much light on the lower branches, but these side-lights should 
be employed for the purpose of leading the learner onward to 
broader generalizations. Unless one sees the lower clearly, the 
higher is obscure. Build solidly the foundation on arith- 
metic — written and mental — and the higher branches will be 
more easily mastered and time saved. 



History of the United States. 

In teaching this branch in the public schools, there does not 
appear, so far as I can see, any substantial reason why the 
pupils should not study and recite the history of the Rebel- 
lion in the same manner that they do the Revolutionary War. 
The pupils discuss the late war and the causes that led to it 
with an impartiality of feeling that speaks more for their good 
sense and clear judgment than any other way by which their 
knowledge can be tested. They may not get hold of all 
the causes involved in that conflict, but they get enough to 
understand the motives which caused the armies to fight so 
heroically, and why the people, both North and South, staked 
everything on the issue. Just as the men who faced each 
other for four years and met so often in a death grapple will 
sit down now and quietly talk over their trials, sufferings, and 
conflicts, so do their children talk over these same stirring 
scenes. They, too, so far as my experience extends, are 
singularly free from bitterness and prejudice. It is certainly 
a period of history that they should study. 



78 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

The spelling-book. 

In addition to the "spelling-lists," I would supplement 
with a good spelling-book. So far, no "word-list," however 
well selected, has supplied the place of a spelling-book. 
All those schools that threw out the spelling-book and 
undertook to teach spelling incidentally or by word-lists failed, 
and for the same reason that grammar, arithmetic, geography, 
and other branches, cannot be taught incidentally as the pupil 
or the class reads Robinson Crusoe, or any other similar work. 
It is an independent study and as such should be pursued. 

James M. Greenwood, 
Superintendent of Schools, Kansas City, Mo. 



Whileaffixing my signature to the report of this Committee 
as expressing substantial agreement with most of its leading 
propositions, I beg leave also to indicate my dissent from cer- 
tain of its recommendations and to suggest certain additions 
which, in my judgment, the report requires. 

1. There are other forms of true correlation which should 
be included with the four mentioned in the first part of the 
report and which should be as clearly and fully treated as are 
these four. 

The first is that form of correlation which is popularly 
understood by the name, and which is also called by some 
writers, concentration, co-ordination, unification, and alludes 
in general to a division of studies into content and form; by 
content meaning that upon which it is fitting that the mind of 
the child should dwell, and by form the means or modes of 
expression by which thoughts are communicated. Or, it may 
be thus expressed: The true content of education is, (1), phi- 
losophy or the knowledge of man as to his motives and hidden 
springs of action indicated in history and literature, and (2), 
science, the knowledge of nature and its manifestations and 
laws. Its form is art, which is the deliberate, purposeful, and 
effective expression to others of that which has been produced 
within man by contact with other men and with nature, and is 
commonly referred to as divided into various arts, such as 



Correlation of Studies. 79 

reading, writing, drawing, making, and modeling. The relation 
of content and form is that of principle and subordinate, the 
latter receiving its chief value from the former. In a true 
education they are so presented to the mind of the child that 
he instinctively and unconsciously grasps this relation and is 
thereby lifted into a higher plane of thinking and living than 
if the various arts are taught, as they too commonly are, with- 
out reference to a noble content. This relation of form to 
content is vaguely referred to in the report, but nowhere 
definitely treated. It seems to me that it is a true form of cor- 
relation, and, as such, deserves special and definite treatment. 
Moreover, it is at present much in the minds of the teachers 
of this country, often in forms that are misleading and harm- 
ful. The fact that it adds the important element of interest 
to the dry details of common school life makes it especially 
attractive to progressive and earnest teachers, and this 
Committee should recognize its importance and make such an 
utterance upon it as will guide the average teacher to a clear 
comprehension of its meaning and to a wise use of it in the 
school-room. 

Second, there is a still higher form of correlation which is 
definitely referred to later in the report as that "of the several 
branches of human learning in the unity of the spiritual view 
furnishe(i by religion to our civilization." This in the report 
is assigned abolutely to the province of higher education. 
While I do not wish to dissent wholly from this view, since it 
is doubtless true that this higher unity cannot be comprehen- 
sively stated for the use of a child, yet a wise teacher can so 
present subjects to even a young child that a sense of the unity 
of all knowledge will, to a certain degree, be unconsciously 
developed in his mind. In regard to certain of the great divis- 
ions of human knowledge, this relation is so evident that they 
cannot be properly presented at all unless the relations be 
made clear. Such studies are history and geography. 

2. The recommendations upon the subject of language 
should be broadened to cover the production of good English 
by the child himself, with the suggestion of suitable topics and 
proper methods. This report confines itself to the absorptive 
side of education and ignores that development of power over 
nature, man, and self, which comes from free exercise of facul- 



80 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

ties and free expression of thought. The study of language as 
something for the child to use himself, the great means by 
which he is to assert his place in civilization, and exert his in- 
fluence for good, is nowhere referred to except in the vaguest 
way. This statement in regard to language applies almost 
equally well to drawing, and here is made evident the impor- 
tance of the form of correlation to which I have just referred. 
The proper material for the training of the child in expression 
is that which is furnished by the study of man and nature. 
His mind being tilled with high themes, he asserts his individu- 
ality, expresses himself in regard to them, and thereby gains 
at once both a closer and clearer comprehension of what he 
has studied, and also the power by which he may become a 
factor in his generation. 

3. I would wish to omit the word '• weekly" where it occurs 
in the discussion of the subjects of general history and science, 
unless it be understood to mean that an amount of time in the 
school year equivalant to sixty minutes weekly be given to 
each of these subjects. It is often better to condense these 
studies into certain portions of the year, giving more time to 
them each week and using them as the basis, to a certain de- 
gree, of language work. I believe that, especially with young- 
children, clearer concepts are produced by such connected 
study, pursued for fewer weeks, than by lessons seven days 
apart. 

4. In my judgment manual training should not be limited 
to the seventh and eighth grades, but should begin in the 
kindergarten with the simple study of form from objects and 
the reproduction in paper of the objects presented, and should 
extend, in a series of carefully graded lessons, through all the 
grades, leaving, however, the heavier tools, such as the plane, 
for the seventh and eighth grades. By these means an interest 
is kept up in the various human industries, sympathy for all 
labor is created, and a certain degree of skill is developed; 
moreover the interest of the pupils in their school is greatly 
enhanced. Manual training has often proved the magnet by 
which boys at the restless age have been kept in school instead 
of leaving for some gainful occupation. 

5. I desire to suggest that geometry may be so taught as to 
be a better mathematical study than algebra to succeed or ac- 



Correlation of /Studies. 81 

company arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades. I do not 
refer particularly to inventional geometry, to which the Com- 
mittee accords a slighting attention, but to constructive geom- 
etry and the simplest propositions in demonstrative geometry, 
thus involving the comprehension of the elementary geometric 
forms and their more obvious relations. This study may be 
made of especial interest in connection with manual training 
and drawing, while it presents fewer difficulties to the imma- 
ture mind than the abstractions of algebra, since it connects 
more directly with the concrete, by which its presentation may 
often be aided. 

6. While agreeing fully with a majority of the Committee 
that the full scientific method should not be applied to the 
study of elementary science by young children, yet I am com- 
pelled to favor more of experimentation and observation by 
the child, and less of telling by the teacher than the report 
would seem to favor. 

7. I would go farther than the majority of the Committee, 
and insist that, except in rare cases, there should be no special- 
ization of the teaching force below the High School, and that 
even in the first years of the High School, so far as possible, 
specialization should be subordinated to a general care of the 
child's welfare and oversight of his methods of study, which 
are impossible when a corps of teachers give instruction, each 
in one subject, and see the student only during the hour of 
recitation. 

8. Whilein the main I agree with the bald statements under 
the head "Correlation by synthesis of studies," since reference 
is made to only a very artificial mode of synthesis not at all in 
vogue in this country, I must dissent emphatically from this 
portion of the report as by inference condemning a most im- 
portant department of correlation, to which I have referred 
earlier. The doctrine of concentration is not necessarily arti- 
ficial; rather it refers to the higher unity, of which this Com- 
mittee has spoken in glowing terms as belonging to the prov- 
ince of higher education. It also includes the division of the 
school curriculum into content and form, which this Committee 
inferentially adopts in its treatment of language. I do not 
believe, any more than do the majority of the Committee, 
that the entire course of study can be literally and exactly 



82 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

centered about a single subject, nor do I believe in any arti- 
ficial correlation; but there is a natural relation of all knowl- 
edges, which this Committee admits in various places, and 
which is the basis of a proper synthesis of studies, according 
to the psychological principal of apperception. 

9. If by the term ' 'oral, " as applied to lessons in biography 
and in natural science, the Committee means, as the word would 
imply, that the instruction is to be given in the form of lec- 
tures by the teacher, I cannot in full agree with the Commit- 
tee's conclusions. As I have already stated, in natural science 
the work should be largely that of observation, and in history 
and biography, while in the very lowest grades the teachers 
should tell the children stories, as soon as it is possible the 
desired information should be obtained by the student through 
reading. To this end the reading lesson in school should be 
properly correlated with his other studies, and he should be 
advised as to his home reading. The information thus 
obtained should be the subject of conversation in the class, 
and should furnish the material for much of the written lan- 
guage work of the children. 

10. I must dissent emphatically and entirely from that por- 
tion of the report which recommends that a text-book in 
grammar be introduced into the fifth year of the child's school 
life. It is a question in my mind whether it would not be 
better if the text-book were not introduced into the grades 
below the High School at all. Certainly it should not appear 
before the seventh year. Such knowledge of grammar as will 
familiarize the child with the structure of the sentence, the 
basis of all language, and as will enable him to use correctly 
forms of speech which the necessities of expression require, 
should be given orally by the teacher in connection with the 
child's written work, when needed ; but against the introduction 
of a text-book upon grammar, the most abstruse of all the sub- 
jects of the school curriculum, when the pupil is not more than 
ten years old, I must protest. Instead of that the child 
should devote much time, some every day, to writing upon 
proper themes in the best English he can command, furnish- 
ing occasion to the teacher to correct such errors as he may 
make, and acquiring by use acquaintance with the correct 
forms of grammar. If, as will doubtless be the case in most 



Correlation of Studies, 83 

cities, local conditioQS render the introduction of Latin into 
the eighth grade inadvisable, this study of grammar may be 
made in that grade somewhat more intensive. 

11. If by a text-book in geography is meant that which is 
commonly understood by the term, and not simply geographi- 
cal reading matter, in my judgment, it should not be intro- 
duced earlier than the fifth year. 

These suggestions and expressions of dissent, if approved 
by the Committee, would necessitate some change in the pro- 
gram submitted, the most important of which would be the 
making room for the production of English in the grades. 
This could be provided in the first and second grades by tak- 
ing some of the time devoted to penmanship and doing the 
work partly in connection with the reading classes. In the 
third and fourth grades it should take some of the time 
devoted to penmanship and should be studied also in connec- 
tion with geography and reading, and in the fifth and sixth 
grades it should take all of the time given to grammar. 

I regret to be compelled to express dissent upon so many 
points, but as most of them appear to me vital and as the 
differences appear to be not merely superficial but funda- 
mental, affecting and affected by one's entire educational creed, 
I cannot do otherwise. To most of the report I most gladly 
give my assent and approval. 

Charles B. Gilbert, 
Superintendent of Schools, St. Paul, Minn. 



I agree most heartily with the main features of the fore- 
going report of the subcommittee on correlation of studies. 
It is so admirable in its analysis of subjects and in its state- 
ment of comparative education values, and so suggestive in its 
practical applications to teaching, that I regret to find myself 
appearing in any way to dissent from its conclusions. Indeed 
my principal objection is not against anything contained in the 
report (unless it be against a possible inference which might 
be drawn at one point), but it refers rather to what seems to 
me to be an omission. 



84 Report of Committee of Fifteen. 

In addition to all the forms of correlation recommended in 
the report, it seems to me possible to make a correlation of 
subjects in a program in such way that the selection of sub- 
ject-matter may be to some extent from all tields of knowledge. 
These selections should be such as are related to one another 
so as to be mutually helpful in acquisition. They should be 
the main features of knowledge in the different departments. 

These different departments from which the chosen sub- 
jects should be taken must be fundamental ones and must be 
sufficiently numerous to represent universal culture. The 
report itself indicates conclusively what these are. 

Reference is made in the report to various attempts that 
have been made to correlate subjects of study. 

A very just criticism is made upon that attempt at correla- 
tion by the use of the story of Robinson Crusoe as a center of 
correlation. It is distinctly pointed out in the report that the 
experiences of Robinson Crusoe are lacking in many of the 
elements of universal culture, and in many elements of educa- 
tion needed to adjust the individual properly to the civiliza- 
tion of our time and country. It is equally evident that the 
attempt to make this story the center of correlation leads 
directly to trivial exercises in other subjects in order to make 
them '^correlate" with Robinson Crusoe. It is also shown in 
the report that it naturally leads to fragmentary knowledge 
of many subjects very much inferior to that clear, logically 
connected knowledge of a subject which may be had by pur- 
suing it without reference to correlating it with all others. 

It is at this point that in my judgment a wrong inference 
is permitted by the report. 

It does not, as it seems to me, follow that, because correla- 
tion based on Robinson Crusoe is a failure, all correlations 
havingthe same general purpose will necessarily prove failures. 
For my own part I do not believe that correlation needs any 
"center." outside the child and its natural activities. If, 
however, it seems wiser to give special prominence to any 
given tield of acquisition, it should, in my judgment, be ac- 
corded to language and its closely related subjects — reading, 
spelling, writing, composing, study of literature, etc.. etc. 
Indeed language as a mode of expression is organically re- 
lated to thinkincr. in all tields of knowledge, as form is re- 



Correlation of Studies. 85 

lated to content. A "system" or "program" of correla- 
tion on this basis would seek for fundamental ideas in all the 
leading branches and make them themes of thought and 
occasions of language exercises. The selections would omit 
all trivialities in all subjects, and would not attempt to 
correlate for the mere sake of correlation; but would seek to 
correlate wherever by such correlation kindred themes may be 
made to illuminate one another. To illustrate, concrete prob- 
lems in arithmetic would be sought that would clearly 
develop amd illustrate mathematical ideas and their applica- 
tion; but in a secondary way these problems would be sought 
for in the various departments of concrete knowledge — 
geography, history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteor- 
ology, political, industrial, or domestic economy. But none of 
these themes would be so relied upon for problems as to com- 
pel one to choose unreasonable or trivial relations on which 
to base them. The problems themselves should represent 
true and important facts and relations of the other subjects 
as surely and rigidly as they should involve correct mathe- 
matical principles; and all such exercises should be rightly 
related to the child's education in language. 

In like manner, when a child is engaged in nature study of 
any kind, some valuable problems in mathematics may be 
found rightly related both to the subject directly in hand and 
the child's natural progress in arithmetic. Also many of the 
lessons in nature study are directly related to some of the 
finest literature ever produced, in which analogies of nature 
are made the means of expression for the finest and most 
delicate of the human experiences. When the child has 
mastered the physical facts on which the literary inspiration is 
based is the true time to give him the advantage of the study 
of such literature. These ideas are not only rightly related 
to one another, but to the mind itself. It is, so to speak, the 
nascent moment when the mind can easily and fully master 
what might else remain an impenetrable mystery; and all be- 
cause subjects and occasion have come into happy conjunction. 

This is not the place in which to attempt any elaboration 
of such a system of correlation. But I feel that its absence 
from the report may make many persons feel that the latter, 
is so far incomplete. L. H. Jones, 

Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, O. 



86 Report of Committee of Fijteen. 

With the main lines of thought in this report I find myself 
in agreement. With many of its details, however, I am not in 
accord. I regret to have to express my dissent from its con- 
clusions in the following particulars; 

1. The report makes too little of the uses of grammar as 
supplying canons of criticism which enable the pupil to cor- 
rect his own English, and as furnishing a key (grammatical 
analysis) that gives him the power to see the meaning of ob- 
scure or involved sentences. 

2. For the study of literature; complete works are to be 
preferred to the selections found in school readers. 

3. That species of language exercise known as paraphras- 
ing I regard as harmful. 

4. The study of number should not be omitted from the 
first year in school. Practice in the primary operations of 
arithmetic should not be omitted from the seventh and eighth 
years. The quadratic equation should be reserved for the 
High School. 

5. The foreign language introduced into the elementary 
school course should be a modern language — French or 
German. Latin should be reserved for those who have time 
and opportunity to master its literature. 

6. In the general programme of studies, the school day is 
cut up into too many short periods. The tendency of such a 
programme as that in the text would be to destroy repose of 
mind and render reflection almost an impossibility. 

7. I desire to express my agreement with the opinions 
stated in Sections 2, 3, 6, and 9 of Mr. Gilbert's dissenting 
opinion; and, in the main, with what Mr. Jones says on the 
correlation of studies. 

William H. Maxwell, 
Superintendent of Schools, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



EDITORIAL NOTE. 
By permission of Dr. Harris, we have published his paper 
on "The Old Psychology vs. The New," as an appendix to this 
report. It will help the reader to understand better not only 
the discussion on psychology, but many other things pertaining 
to both theory and practice which the report contains. 



APPENDIX, 



THE OLD PSYCHOLOGY vs. THE NEW. 



I understand that this question includes under the term 
"new psychology" only two classes of investigation, namely, 
what is known as "physiological psychology" dating from the 
discovery of Broca in 18(31, and what is known as child-study, 
including the researches of Professor Preyer and of Dr. 
Stanley Hall, their co-workers and disciples. 

All other studies of mind from ancient times to the pres- 
ent time, whether based on induction or deduction, whether 
a priori as rational psychology, or a posteriori as empirical 
psychology, should be called the "old psychology." It seems 
to me that both of these psychologies are of immense impor- 
tance — that neither is a substitute for the other, or to be neg- 
lected by the teacher who wishes to know scientifically the 
mind that he is supposed to educate. 

For I must hold that there is a constitution of the mind 
common to all rational beings — a rational nature which may 
be discovered by introspection and distinguished from the 
transient and variable characteristics which are determined 
in large manner by environment and conditions of develop- 
ment. 

I would name as by far the most important knowledge 
from this source, the distinction of the soul into several stages 
as that manifested in plant life — called by Aristotle the 
nutritive or vegetable soul; the soul as active in sensation and 
locomotion, or the animal soul; the rational soul manifested in 
imagination, memory, reflection, and in pure thought. The 
distinction of active and passive reason made by Aristotle in 
his famous treatise on the soul and so often re-discovered or 
verified by profound thinkers in the history of philosophy — is 
the principle of this classification of soul-activities. On it 
is founded the philosophical doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. In fact, not only the doctrine of immortality but also 
the doctrines of theism and the freedom of the will are based 
on this rock of the old psychology developed by Aristotle, out 



88 Appendix. 

of the hints of Plato or Socrates. God, freedom, and immor- 
tality are the three good gifts of philosophy according to 
Novalis; they are all derived from the insight that finds in 
pure thought the independent self-activity of the soul and sees 
in it the only possible type of being for a first principle of the 
world — a Creator. The idea of self-activity is moreover the 
basal idea of free will. 

The very concept of will is impossible on the basis of em- 
pirical thinking. For the understanding as Coleridge defined 
it deals with relations between objects, and finds causal rela- 
tions everywhere but not self-activity or will. It tries to ex- 
plain each thing through its environment — and it never rests 
until it has traced the phenomena of an object to a ground in 
something else outside. 

That the fundamental condition of introspection is the ad- 
mission of this idea of self activity is evident, if we consider 
that the world of self consciousness contains only feelings, vo- 
litions, and ideas. Each one of these is two-fold, implying 
subject and object. There are two poles to each; feeling is 
nothing unless it have a subject that feels, and unless the self 
that feels is the object of the feeling. So volition implies a 
self that acts, and moreover a determination or limitation of 
the subject issuing in an objective deed — a volition has the 
twofold aspect of subject and object. So, too, an idea is al- 
ways thought as a determination of the self which thinks it — 
or defines it — it is conceived by the mind — it, too, involves 
subject and object. 

Now, by no possibility can external observation discover 
any such twofold objects in space and time. All objects are 
dead results, or in a process of becoming through some external 
cause. 

If we discriminate dead objects from living objects and 
recognize plants, animals, and men before us, we do it because 
we interpret the forms, shapes, and movements before us as 
indicative of a self-determining soul within the object. We 
transfer to the object by an act of inference, an internality of 
life, feeling, volition, or thought such as we know directly only 
by introspection, and can only know thus. 

To expand this theme one would show the importance of 
these distinctions of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Leibnitz, in mak- 



Appendix. 89 

ing an account of the spiritual life of man — an inventorying 
the principles of his civilization, and making clear and con- 
sistent his views of the world. 

To live is one thing, but to give a rational and consistent 
account of one's life is a different and difficult matter. The old 
psychology succeeded in doing this by these fundamental dis- 
tinctions, and all new attempts at psychology either prove 
abortive or else soon fall into line with the old psychology, so 
far as these essentials are concerned — they end in affirming 
self-activity as more substantial than material things, and in 
the admission of various grades of realization of this self-activ- 
ity or soul. 

Another very important step in this recognition of the 
contents of self-consciousness which the German thinkers have 
added to the old psychology is the recognition of the charac- 
teristic of universality and necessity as the criterion of what 
is in the constitution of mind itself as contra distinguished 
from experience or empirical content. By this time and space, 
the categories of quality and quanity, the laws of causality, 
identity and included middle, the ideas of self-activity, moral 
responsibility and religion, all transcend experience and are 
formed by introspection. 

It is their application which constitutes experience, and 
experience would be impossible unless the mind had in itself 
these powers a priori, for these powers make experience pos- 
sible. If we could not furnish the intuitions of infinite space 
and time, we could not perceive objects of experience— nor un- 
less we could furnish the category of causality could we refer 
our sensations to objects as causes. 

Universal and necessary ideas are furnished by the mind 
itself, and not derived from experience, although our con- 
sciousness of them may date from our application of them to 
the content of experience. 

Formal logic, with its judgments and syllogisms, its 
figures and moods, should be regarded also as a part of 
rational psychology in so far as it reveals to us the forms of 
action of the thinking reason. 

All these contributions of the old psychology are of price- 
less value as giving us the means to understand the place we 
occupy in the universe with our ideals of civilization. They 



90 Appendix. 

furnish us directive power, they give us the regulative ideals 
of education, religion, jurisprudence, politics, and the general 
conduct of life. 

But if the old psychology has furnished these substantial 
things, it has not furnished all that is desirable. 

There is a realm of conditions which must be understood 
before man can be made to realize his ideals. 

The product of nature is an animal, and not a civilized 
man. How can man react upon nature; how can he ascend out 
of his own natural conditions — how can he rise from the stage 
of sense-perception to that of reflection — how from mere reflec- 
tion to mere thought — how can he put off his state of slavery 
to the category of thing and environment, and rise to the 
category of self- activity? This is to ask how can he ascend 
from a mechanical view of the world to an ethical view of it? 
Certainly he must know the bodily conditions that limit or en- 
thrall the soul. He must be able to recognize what activity 
tends to fix the soul in a lower order of thought and action, 
and what exercise will tend to lift it to a higher order. 

To enumerate some of these enthralling conditions 
through which the soul passes necessarily if it ever comes to 
the highest culture, we must name the influences and attrac- 
tions of one's habitat, its climate and soil, its outlook, its 
means of connection with the rest of the world. Then next 
there is the race and stock of which one comes — black, red, 
yellow, or white; northern or southern-European, inheriting 
all the evil tendencies and all the good aspirations. Then the 
temperament and idiosincracy of the individual, as his natural 
talents or his genius; how deep these all lie as predetermining 
causes in his career! If he is alone the efficient cause or the 
free will — at least these conditions of habitat, race, and stock 
furnish the material that he is to quarry and build into the 
temple of his life — a Parthenon, a Pantheon, or only a mud 
hut or a snow house. 

Then come other natural elements to be regarded — those 
of sex — the seven ages from infancy to senility — the physical 
conditions that belong to sleep and dreams and the waking 
state — the health and disease of the body — the insane ten- 
dencies — the results of habits in hardening and fixing the life 
of the individual in some lower round of activity. 



Appendix. 91 

Of all these, the laws of growth from infancy to mature 
age, especially concern the educator. 

There is for man, as contrasted with lower animals, along 
period of helpless infancy. Prof. John Fiske has shown the 
importance of this fact to the theory of evolution as applied to 
man. Basing his theory on some hints of Wallace and Spen- 
cer, he has explained how the differentiation of the primitive 
savage man from the animal groups must have been accom- 
plished. Where psychical life is complex there is not time for 
all capacities to become organized before birth. The pro- 
longation of helpless infancy is required for the development of 
man's adaptations to the spiritual environment implied in the 
habits and arts and modes of behavior of the social community 
into which man is born. He is born first as an infant body — 
he must be born second as an ethical soul or else he cannot be- 
come human. The conditions are of extreme complexity. 
This is the most important contribution of the doctrine of 
evolution to education. Doctor Nicholas Murray Butler has 
pointed out that the Greek philosopher Anaximander more 
than two thousand years ago spoke of the prolonged period of 
infancy as a reason for believing that in the beginnin>g, man 
had an origin from animals of a different species from himself. 
The Greek did not perceive the relation of this prolonged in- 
fancy to the adjustment of the complex physical and spiritual 
activities of the child to his environment. 

In the light of this discovery, we may see what an im- 
portant bearing the results of child-study and physiological 
psychology will have on education. For is it not evident, that 
if the child is at any epoch of his long period of helplessness 
inured into any habit or fixed form of activity belonging to a 
lower stage of development, the tendency will be to arrest 
growth at that standpoint and make it difficult or next to im- 
possible to continue the growth of the child into higher and 
more civilized forms of soul-activity. 

A severe drill in mechanical habits of memorizing or cal- 
culating — any over cultivation of sense-perception in tender 
years, may so arrest the development of the soul at a mechan- 
ical method of thinking, and prevent the further growth into 
spiritual insight. 

Especially on the second plane of thought, that which fol- 



92 Appendix. 

lows sense-perception and the mechanical stage of thinking, 
namely the stage of noticing mere relations and of classifying 
by mere likeness or difference, or even the search for causal 
relations, there is most danger of this arrested development. 
The absorption of the gaze upon adjustments within the ma- 
chine prevents us from seeing the machine as a whole. The 
attention to details of coloring and drawing may prevent one 
from seeing the significance of the great work of art. 

The habit of parsing every sentence that one sees may 
prevent one from enjoying a sonnet of Wordsworth. Too 
much counting and calculating may at a tender age set the 
mind in a mechanical habit of looking for mere numerical re- 
lations in whatever it sees. Certainly the young savage who 
is taught to see in nature only the traces that mark the pas- 
sage of a wild animal or perhaps of a warrior foe. has stopped 
his growth of observation at a point not very much above that 
of the hound that hunts by scent. 

And yet all of these mechanical studies are necessary in 
the course of study — they can not be replaced except by 
others equally objectionable in the same aspect. 

The question is then where to stop and change to other 
and higher branches in time to preserve the full momentum of 
progress that the child has made. 

Professor Woodward has pointed out that the education 
effect of manual training is destroyed by having the pupils 
work for the market. It turns the attention towards the 
training in skill and the education effect which comes of first 
insight is afterwards neglected. The first machine made is an 
education to its maker — the second and subsequent machines 
made are only a matter of habit. To keep the intellect out of 
the abyss of habit and to make the ethical behavior more and 
more a matter of unquestioning habit seems to be the de- 
sideratum. 

Child study will perhaps find its most profitable field of 
investigation in this matter of arrested development. If it 
can tell the teacher how far to push thoroughness to the 
borders of mechanical perfection and when to stop just before 
induration and arrest sets in, it will reform all our methods of 
teaching, and it can and will do this. The new psychology 
in its two phases of direct physiological study of brain and 



Appendix. 93 

nerves, and its observation of child development will show us 
how to realize by education the ideals of the highest civiliza- 
tion. The prolonged infancy of man will be in less danger 
of curtailment through vicious school methods. 

The orphaned and outcast child becomes precociously 
world-wise. But the school can scarcely reclaim the gamin 
from the streets of Paris or New York. He has become as 
cunning and self-helpful as the water rat, but not in ethical or 
spiritual methods. He should have been held back from the 
bitter lessons of life by the shielding hand of the family. He 
would then have become a positive influence for civilization in 
its height and depth. As a gamin, he can live a life only a 
little above that of the water rats, and is good only to feed the 
fires of revolution. 

Dr. W. T. Harris, 

Commissioner of Education. 



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